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LOOK UP 



LOOK UP 

SUNSHINE TREATMENT 
FOR SHADOWED LIVES 



By, 
Randolph Lewis 

Author of **The Romance of the Steamer Trunk'* 
"Shadow Trails", etc* 



NEW YORK 

JAMES A. McCANN COMPANY 

1919 



^ 






Copyright 1919, by 

THE JAMES A. McCANN COMPANY 

All Rights Reserved 



iWV 28 iil9 



Printed in the U. S. A 



©CI.A586691 



CONTENTS 



Marvel of Spring — 13 

Bread and Blood ., . 18 

After » 21 

The People of Want ., 25 

Sudden Death 29 

The Submerged 33 

Ghosts 87 

"Cy" Perkins and the Big City 41 

Hello! "Miss Lizzie!" 45; 

Little Tragfj)y 49 

Little Lures — 53 

Lo, The Parasites! 56 

Bridging the Ages * , 59 

Fellowship of Dollars 63 

Our Animal Friends , 66 

A Woman's Tragedy 69 

Dukes and Others 74 

The Soul in the Voice. 77 

Harmony of Hearts , , 80 

Golden Might 83 

Too Much of a Good Thing. . ... 87 

When Mother Broiders 91 

Practising the Emotions 95 



The Titanic Thief 98 

Thinking Young . . ... 102 

Glory of Woman's Work 105 

Sophistry of Egotism , 108 

How Are You Living? 110 

A Big Building Lesson 114« 

The Magic Crystal of Peace. 117 

The Passing of the Birds 121 

Love and Laughter 124 

The Futility of Gold 128 

Thoroughness 131 

Treasure of a Cheerful Heart 183 

Enshrining the Square Deal 137 

The Treasure Deeps of Silence 141 

The Mystery of Life 145 

The Causeway of Shadow 148 

A Woman and a Dog 151 

Concerning Conscience 155 

Helpfulness and Happiness 158 

Truth and the Demon Jest 162 

Uses and Excuses 166 

Crime Color Blind 170 

Pampered Present and Primitive Past 174 

His Wife and Ours 178 

The Boy That Came Back 182 

When Old Age is Empty 186 

Hazard of Hope , 190 

Tragedy of Success 194 

Beauty and Life 198 

Ashes of Destiny 202 

Man and His Mother 205 



The "Thoughtless Poor" ,.__. 209 

Devotion of the Dumb ...--.. .i.>. . 214 

The Hope of the World 218 

The Beatitudes of Blood 223 

Feet of Clay 227 

Going to the Dogs 2S1 

Tragedy of Beauty 236 

Time's Transformations 240 

This Way to the Stars! , 243 

The Word "Graft" 247 

Our Angels and Demons 250 

Romance and Life 255 

The Soul's Penalties 259 

The Crook De Luxe .,. . . . 263 

Concentration and Success. . . . . ... . . 268 

Gift of Prophecy. ... ... . .;i^>T.T.T.:iT.i.-. 270 



\ 



ACKNOWLEDGEMENT 

These little commentaries on men and things in the 
world's passing show are selected from, syndicate con- 
tributions and from editorial expressions, the greater 
number of which alternated with anonymously presented 
themes of the same character by the late Elbert Hubbard. 
And, in giving them the dignity of book covers, grateful 
acknowledgment is made to the New York Herald Pub- 
lishing Company, The Author. 



FOREWORD 

This little book is a genuine contribution to 
the literature of Inspiration. It is done in 
prose, but records the drama of a poet's soul. 
You will read to laugh and cry and think of 
Life's enigmas with brooding tenderness. 

In all the range of modern writing I do not 
know of a more exquisite poem than Mr. 
Lewis's obituary of a Persian Kitten found 
in this volume. I quote two paragraphs: 

"To those who loved her, Pansy looked like 
a bundle of silver floss. Her eyes were like 
green jade, large and wdde apart, and, as sun- 
light and shadow touched them, they were shot 
with gold or deepened into sapphire, calm and 
deep as the summer seas when the winds are 
asleep. Her belly was as white as the hermit 
snow on unsealed mountain peaks, and her 
long, bushy tail swayed in the rhythm of her 
moods like the fan of a beauty conscious of 
her charms. 

"When the morning hour arrived she woke 



FOREWORD 

her mistress by a method so poetic that it must 
have come down through the lost years from 
the joyous time of Hafiz, who saw in the world 
about him nothing but beauty and love. To 
arouse her mistress she gently touched the eye- 
lids of the sleeper with her tongue — kissed 
sleep from the eyes that loved to behold her." 
Here's a book to keep on your desk and take 
as medicine for tired nerves and wearied spirit. 

Thomas Dixon. 

New York, August 22, 1919 



INTRODUCTION 

(From the American Press) 

One of the most successful of New York's 
afternoon papers, which has treated everything 
flippantly, even the weather, though it cannot 
make the rain one drop more or less, has re- 
cently become a preacher of righteousness. 
That is to say, the leading editorial every day 
is an essay of a half column on some subject 
relating to human conduct, inculcating an 
ethical or rehgious lesson. 

Admitting that there is still room for teach- 
ing along this line, it would appear that the 
columns of a popular newspaper would be the 
very best place to catch the attention of a 
large nimiber of persons who give little 
thought to the subject, just as the street 
preacher gains the ear of those who never en- 
ter a house of worship. 

If it were necessary in the days of Solomon, 



INTRODUCTION 

iwhen a man had ample time for reflection as 
he journeyed by foot from Jericho to Jerusa- 
lem, for wisdom to cry aloud in the streets, how 
much more needful it is now in the mad rush 
of modern hfe! 

Wise and great men in all ages have given 
much thought not only to morals, but to man- 
ners, which have been defined as "minor mor- 
als." While the few have done this, the great 
majority of mankind go along in a happy-go- 
lucky fashion, trusting to instinct to guide 
them aright or to Providence to save them 
from blunders In most cases their instinct 
leads them surely and swiftly to grief, and 
Providence does not interfere. 

It is not because these have not desired to 
do the right thing, but because they have given 
little thought to the subject and have made no 
adequate preparation to meet the various con- 
ditions which arise in our social and business 
relations. A man, for example, who will act 
with the greatest punctiliousness in one matter 
will blunder ludicrously in another. If the 
workings of his mind could be uncovered it 
would be found that in one case he had stud- 
ied the matter and marked out the course he 



INTRODUCTION 

ought to pursue, in the other he had acted on 
the impulse of the moment. 

Many men whose good intentions are used 
for paving stones below have just as earnestly 
desired to do right as their wiser neighbors, 
but they have made no preparation. They 
have probably never read a book on ethics in 
all their Uves. They have been content if they 
have understood the more important princi- 
ples of morality, the observance of which has 
enabled them to lead a respectable Hf e. News- 
papers might enlarge their usefulness and ren- 
der a good service to society if they could print 
in every issue something which would be help- 
ful to this class. 

This may be regarded as unimportant and 
even fanciful, but it will readUy be remem- 
bered that some very prominent American 
citizens have expatriated themselves because of 
blunders in "minor morals." They have not 
offended against either the Decalogue or the 
civil law, but have been led by foolish mistakes 
in their intercourse with their fellows into un- 
bearable positions, from which they have fled. 
Their unhappy plight can only be accounted 
for on the assumption that they had not given 



INTRODUCTION 

proper attention to such matters. If their 
newspaper had contained every day a little 
lesson in ethics it might have been different. 

We are told now that a very prominent man 
who has been going through life with the smile 
that won't come off has suddenly been thrown 
into the deepest gloom because in a weak mo- 
ment he subscribed to "Fads and Fancies," an 
act perhaps not inherently wrong, but indi- 
cating a wrong view of tilings and a lack of the 
abihty to decide promptly upon the right 
course. 

But we are not so much concerned about 
New York's Four Hundred and their fads and 
fancies. It is in the interest of the great mass 
of the American people that we advocate 
teaching morals and manners in the columns 
of the newspapers. And we believe the little 
ethical essay would make a profitable feature 
for the paper itself. The metropolitan journal 
referred to has been running the feature long 
enough to determine whether it is popular and 
continues it. 



MARVEL OF SPRING 

The Spring sun bathed the roofs in a rain 
of radiance. Across the blue skies the clouds 
sailed in snowy argosies. A flock of pigeons 
flashed by in a joyous flight, their wings touch- 
ed to silver by the sunlight. From afar came 
the noises of the street, the tremendous day 
stir of the city. 

The air was soft and the drinking of it 
brought a mysterious exhilaration which no 
medicine yet had given. And thie heart was 
touched with something like gladness, with 
hope, with new life and sense of contentment. 
So felt the sick man in the attic of a tenement. 
He had survived through the dreary wdnter, 
grimly holding to life, which in health he found 
a burden to maintain; and now had come his 
rev/ard. 

Spring had arrived. As he looked out of bis 
window at the sky and breathed the air, which 
bore a subtle message from the fields, he felt 
stronger. The mould in the gutter of the roof 

13 



14 LOOK UE 

across the court had begun to put out fresh 
green shoots, and as he looked upon them a 
passionate yearning to go forth into the open 
seized him — ^to wander in the fields, in the 
woods with the forest odors in his nostrils. 

Weak and emaciated, with a chill in his 
blood, he felt the gentle warmth of Spring 
like a kiss, and it thrilled him wth emotion. 

The mountains, the fields, the hills and the 
waters he could not behold, but in the symbol 
of these things, the meagre bit of rank vege- 
tation on a roof top, he found a nameless joy. 
It represented the earth that he loved so well, 
to hnger a brief spell upon which he had striv- 
ed with savage desperation of spirit. 

He felt that if he were able he would go 
forth and, throwing himself face downward 
on the sod, kiss the earth out of sheer glad- 
ness. Thus did the spirit of Spring possess 
him. 

Thus he dreamed from day to day while 
th^ sun grew warmer^ until one day work- 
men came and repaired the roof opposite, re- 
moving the tuft of grass. Then the man died. 

During a clear Spring Sunday in New York 
thousands of persons swarm from their hives 



MARVEL OF SPRING 15 

of habitation and seek the open spots that lie, 
like blossoms of green, amid the vast, bleak 
areas of a great city. They answer the call of 
Spring, which stirs the human with the same 
magic that brings the hibernating bear from its 
winter retreat, that calls the robins from the 
southland and touches the dry plant into bud 
and blossom. 

Spring is the time of the year's greatest 
spectacle, filled with thousands of tints and 
shifting Mdth varying effects, like the joyous 
colors that flash triumphant from the prism 
that holds them. 

It is also the time of hf e's greatest mystery 
— ^the unfathomable process of birth and re- 
surrection. The bright bloom of to-day fades 
and passes away, to be reproduced a thousand- 
fold when the next Spring raises her head to 
the skies and, shaking the diamonds of rain 
from her hair, smiles upon the earth, and, 
touching it, thrills it again into hfe. 

It is the awakening of the year, and in it 
lies the very joy of hfe. This time of the soul's 
elation lingers tenderly throughout the less 
lovely parts of the year. 

Spring is the time of Stir, and all animate 



16 LOOK UP 

things feel its impulse, from the minute 
life which hes under the forest mould, to the 
greatest of all created things — ^which is Man. 

Spring is the Almightj^'s golden summons 
to the open, to the gladness of being, of mov- 
ing, of feeling. Every poet who has written 
has had some note of Spring to ^ound, because 
he was human and felt what the great heart 
of the world felt. 

"In the Spring a young man' s fancy light- 
ly turns to thoughts of love," is true in its 
broadest sense, and is so, not only of the young 
man, but of all men, whether in the May day 
of life or in the white winter of old age. 

It is the thrill of love that gives Spring 
its charm. The expression of the feeling may 
Yaxj. Some men shape its overflow to admira- 
tion of the things of nature; others to tender 
fancies around the thought of some fair wo- 
man; the artist, grasping its glories, transfers 
them to canvas. 

It is love that animates all — a great note 
struck on the keyboard of Nature to which 
we all ^dbrate. Any biologist will tell you this 
in explaining the phenomenon, but he will not 
express it in this way. Still, it is the greatest 



MARVEL OF SPRUSTG 17 

of poems, because it is the greatest of truths. 
And this poetry and truth go at Spring with 
the glad people of the air, the tribes of the sea 
that fare on the long way ; the shy children of 
the wood-world, the caressing spirits of the 
winds, and Man himself, who, of all, should 
feel the greatest joy in Spring, 



BREAD AND BLOOD 

The women raised their voices in jubilation, 
shrill, confused, discordant, but thrilling with 
the breath of triumph. A motley lot they, 
marked with toil, bent by it, stamped with it. 

On some of the faces was that pathetic re- 
signation which comes to those who are broken 
at the wheel in life's struggle and who, thus 
crippled, limp doggedly on. Others were dull, 
apathetic, brutish, as though they might not 
respond to any sensation save the demand of 
the most primal things. 

Poverty exacts terrible penalties. It takes 
away all and gives in return nothing, only its 
hideous clutch, which makes a man a horror 
and distorts and tortures the body. 

These women, who rejoiced in the sad round 
of their Mves, had few occasions when thank- 
fulness and triumph have shaken them like a 
glad mountain wind and the feeling that filled 
their breasts overflowed in tumult at the lips. 

18 



BREAD AND BLOOD 19 

Care and pain and the fear of the morrow 
were ever with them. 

Only a few days before, stung by hunger 
and blindly rebelling against an oppres,sive 
system, they had swept in a frantic, disheveled 
toiTent along the street, their voices sounding 
harshly, savagely, with the note of beasts whip- 
ped by hunger. 

In the passionate impulse that made furies 
of them, their eyes burned with a mad fever, 
and, in paroxysms of feeling, they stretched 
their arms skyward as though the movement 
aided in the expression of what bitterness was 
in their hearts. Then the wives, the sisters and 
the mothers of the New York East vSide strik- 
ing bakers were side by side with the men in 
their fight with the "scabs," their raids on the 
bakeshops. 

But now they raised their voices in joy. 
Forty-niQe of the employers had given in and 
the prospects were that the strike iSoon would 
be fuUy won. No note sounded by the human 
voice was ever more sincere. The gratitude of 
the poor rises straight to heaven. 

It must be for a long time to come that 
some will have much and others barely possess 



20 LOOK UP. 

the least. Some, too, must go empty-handed 
and feed on the husks. 

One man robed in purple is bored by exist- 
ence; the other, naked, is overjoyed at the mere 
privilege to live. 

The struggle to live becomes more terrible 
as it goes downward. Often from the depths 
there comes a cry, rising above the torment 
din, appealing to the hearts and consciences 
of men, even as it reaches heaven. 



AlFTER 

The man who discovered the white corpus- 
cles in the blood conferred a vast benefit on 
mankind and gave incalculable aid in the bat- 
tle against disease. His name is Metchnikoff 
and he spent years in paiustakiug research and 
experimentation. His view of life is neces- 
sarily materialistic, and his book, "The Nature 
of Man," while it is rich in surprising facts, 
Iqses its authority when he approaches the 
spiritual side. 

He finds life full of "disharmonies," and 
avers that we are the degenerate descendants of 
anthropoid apes! As to immortality he is 
frank in saying that it has no justification in 
fact. 

Science made this eminent suvant a miser- 
able man indeed, and Felix Adler, in answer- 
ing his principal contentions, shows how far 
a man may go amiss who ventures outside 
of his own particular field. Newton made a 
poor theologian. Darwin was a weakling at 

21 



22 LOOK UP 

ethics and' Goethe proved anything but a 
great painter. Metchnikoff could not study 
a human soul through a microscope. He could 
only do so through the medium of himself ; but 
he rejected the material so near at hand. 

One of the most potent arguments for the 
belief in immortality, says Dr. Adler, "has 
been the passionate longing of love — love 
mourning at the grave, love refusing to give 
up to night and annihilation the object of its 
cherishing. Yet whenever this plea of love is 
put forth how unavertibly does the misgiving 
enter, in a world which is so ordered that hap- 
piness is frustrated — those whom we cannot 
afford to spare being taken from us — whether 
in such a world there is adequate reason to 
suppose that frustration will be compensated 
by future restoration, and that the ties which 
were fSo ruthlessly ruptured here Mali be knit 
anew, never thereafter to be sundered. Is the 
desire, no matter how passionate and intense, 
a guarantee of its own fulfillment?" 

How many of you have stood by your be- 
loved dead, and, looking at the lips sealed with 
eternal silence, pondered over the mystery 
which they could not tell? 



AFTER 23 

Only the dead know and their tongues utter 
no word. Yet faith breathes a message in the 
heart, a message that has been the same since 
the first primitive man looked at the sun and, 
marveUing at its glory, felt stirring in his 
hairy breast a dim sense of infinite awe. 

The belief in immortality has been a power- 
ful expression through all ages, and modern 
science, so destructive to old concepts, has been 
thus far unable to disprove it. 

It is instinctive as breathing. A promise, 
it is also an uplifting force which makes man 
feel a glorious kinship to God — ^the touch 
that transfigures the base and the sodden and 
puts into the breast of man that mentor of 
good which is the immaculate twin of con- 
science. 

A man who realizes one perfect moment in 
his life has tasted of the eternal. 

So it is that we may know of immortality 
while isurrounded by homely labors and cares. 

The humble laborer, rank with the sweat of 
toil ; the wealthy man, furrowed with the care 
of expanding fortune, may realize this infinite 
satisfaction. But the one who is empty-handed 
is likely to come nearer to it. 



24 LOOK UP 

Immortality is a comforting belief, like the 
promise of a cool, green shade after a sun 
smitten journey over bare, rocky places. If 
it sufficeth a man, why seek to take it from 
liim, Hke a robber who w^ould steal through 
mere wantonness and tiien tlii'ow the plunder 
away? 

You who have had the. harmonies of nature 
forced in upon rou, or who have sensed them 
with superior inislvrjct and noted their incom- 
parable beauties with eye and ear, you have 
felt ineffably the great lesson of immortality! 

The Springfime resurrection, when the 
gaunt dead of winter take on floral bridal 
robes and enter again into the fulness of love 
and living; the awakening which stirs through 
all nature and touches deeply the fibre of man 
— ^they are pages in the Book of Belief, elo- 
quent ^vith the lesson of the Law, wliich neither 
the adventuring mind of man nor the profane 
hand of the atheist can change. 



THE PEOPLE OF WANT 

The gospel of work carries with it the very 
secret of existence. Life is the state of activi- 
ties in which man reaches his highest develop- 
ment. When we cease to work we begin to go 
backward, to weaken and to die. The world 
has no place for drones. Its rewards crown 
only effort. 

And yet, if a man is willing and can find 
nothing for his hands to do, he must pay the 
penalty, even as the one of sloth and idleness. 
This is not as it should be ; but when all social 
and economic conditions are perfectly adjust- 
ed we will have reached the millennium. 

John D. Rockfeller, than whom no other 
man has a clearer insight into industrial pro- 
blems, once called attention to the fact that 
in 1898 there were 3,000,00 men out of work 
and predicted that, because of overproduction 
in all lines, 1907 and 1908 would see from 
7,000,000 to 10,000,000 in the idleness of hard 
times. Add to these the millions of the con- 

25 



26 LOOK UP 

tinually unemployed and one had, indeed, a 
grim and imposing legion in the future! 

Many of these millions may have read Mr. 
Rockefeller's formula for success, set forth 
about the same time, but that it profited any of 
them is a matter of doubt. A thing given so 
freely is not apt to be of much value to a man 
whose charactei- is not shaped hke that of the 
giver. How Mr. Rockefeller amassed his 
enormous fortune can only be effective when 
put in operation by Rockefeller himself. 
Otherwise it must prove to be a strange tool 
in unf amiHar hands. Speaking before a prayer 
meeting in Cleveland, the genius of the Stand- 
ard Oil said: — 

"I believe that it is our duty to pray and 
work, aild I believe it is our duty to give in 
support of the Church. This is the secret of 
our success in business* Why shouldn't it be 
the secret of our success here?" 

But what if there's no work to be had? Such 
a condition was predicted for those 100,000,000 
Avilling and wasted men which Mr. Rockefeller 
saw peopHng the future. And the haggard, 
distorted shapes which at all times are at the 
bottom — ^the "submerged tenth!" 



PEOPLE OF WANT 27 

These people of the abyss pray or, weary 
of unfruitful supplications, turn to shudder- 
ing blasphemy. If from the depths any sound 
should rise to the clearer atmosphere, in its 
brutal babel might be detected curses and 
groans, such as are wrung from souls in mortal 
torment. 

No hell was ever created that is filled with 
more tortures, more terrors, than stark pov-' 
erty. It crushes and lashes a man, and, when 
his soul becomes seared and distorted, trans- 
forms him into a brute. Added to this is im- 
posed the horrible penalty that, while being a 
brute, he should retain enough of what is 
human to make the torture all the more 
poignant. 

In this bell of the "submerged tenth" there 
are prayers hot with pain or thrilling with an- 
guish. They are uttered by those whom a re- 
morseless system has just pushed over the 
brink. Others, numbed by pain, hopeless, 
spiritless, wander dumbly and blindly, not 
knowing whither, only knowSng that death 
awaits at the end. But the great mass, with 
the instinct of the brute dominating the spirit 
of the man, falls one upon the other in a sac- 



28 LOOK UP 

age, sickening struggle, like ravening wolves. 

The pit is f uU of monstrous things, the sight 
of which causes the heart to turn faint ; but few 
there be who care to look down into the inferno 
and, looking, go down to extend a helping 
hand. There is too much theory about most of 
the schemes for the alleviation of poverty and 
too little of the responsive human heart which 
goes direct to the seat of the trouble. 

Statistics show that millions of men, women 
and children in America are foredoomed to a 
desperate struggle for the bare necessities of 
life — enough food to hold body and soul to- 
gether and shelter, whether it be in unguarded 
hallways or noisome cellars. 

When the bitterness of blasphemy palls on 
the lips and the fierce spirit of rebellion passes 
and is followed by helpless calm, praj^er from 
these, maybe ; and it shapes itself in sobs. But 
there is no work. And the secret of the wealthy 
man, with its potentialities of food and com- 
fort, proves to be an empty, mocking thing — 
the gift of bread that turns to stone. 

And so the world goes. Some have much, 
others none. And men live because they fear 
to die, and die because they fear to live. 



SUDDEN DEATH 

The Man had travelled a long way when 
night fell. Through sunshine and shade he had 
gone, along smooth roads and rough, through 
green valleys and rugged uplands, and yet 
his feet were not slowed by fatigue. 

In the starshine the white road lay plain 
before him, and he walked confidently onward. 
Dense shadows lurked amid the trees, and, as 
he looked upward, the heavens seemed to flow 
along in a great tide of stars. He who gazes 
at the ocean's horizon when it has neither be- 
ginning nor end may feel the same sense of 
awe and littleness of him who looks in solitude 
and silence on the eternal sweep of the River 
of Night. 

And, so gazing, the Man felt humbler than 
a mote that struggles in a thread of sunshine. 

This impress of the Infinite, while it stirred 
him to reverent emotion, seemed almost to an- 
nihilate him. So he looked backward, in his 
mind, to the things that were nearer to him — 

29 



so LOOK UP 

along the Way of Years, marked by cool green 
spots and brocaded with flowers, on which 
neither malice nor envy had ever laid its 
blight; the places that were fragrant with the 
souls of good deeds. 

There neither wddow nor orphan raised a 
voice in bitterness and tears because of any 
act of his; no man was there who trampled 
the garden spots and cried a curse on him who 
had passed, and the only sounds heard were 
the low whisper of the wind, the crystalline 
plash of fulling waters and the full-throated 
rapture of birds. 

It was a cheering retrospect and the heart 
of the Man grew with an infinite content. The 
best of his life was there. The rest lay before 
him. He was strong in looking forward to 
those things unborn, w^hich were shaping them- 
selves in the future. 

Suddenly something brushed his lips, light 
and soft as the touch of a butterfly's wings. 
The star-scattered skies and the dewy earth 
melted into darkness, so that there w^as neither 
sky above nor the earth beneath his feet. Yet 
was he unafraid. 

Swiftly he went forward, and beside him 



SUDDEN DEATH 31 

the figure of a woman; but her face he could 
not see. Only he knew that her presence 
brought him a contentment deep as the sound- 
less seas. His eyes at last pierced the gloom 
and she turned her head so that he beheld her 
face. 

In her eyes were infinite sorrow and pity, 
and her lips, gentle, firm, yet tender, were an- 
guished at the corners with unutterable suffer- 
ing. Yet, withal, she had a beauty that moved 
the soul. There were tears on her pale cheeks, 
which she pressed against those of the Man, 
and sobbed as a mother who is touched by the 
hurt of a child. ' 

"Wherefore do you weep?" he asked. 

"I am Sudden Death," said she. " I grieve 
that I swept you from the world so suddenly, 
without a word of warning, as a leaf caught in 
swift eddy of the capricious wind. I grieve 
that you should, in darkness, be brought face 
to face with such a terrible shape as I, who 
cliill the blood of men and put into their hearts 
the Nameless Terror." 

The Man smiled as he looked upon her and 
said: — ^"None of these things do I behold or 
feel." 



LOOK UP 

"That is because you behold me through the 
eyes of a clear conscience," came the answer. 

We live but to die, and die but to live. That 
IS the most cheering of all beliefs. A man's 
deeds make the way for him in the infinite or 
heap it with obstacles. 

Sudden Death brings an admonition to right 
living and to that preparedness which should 
mark the wise in the battle of life. 

A tornado may claim hundreds of victims, a 
railroad wreck hurl many lives into darkness; 
but the sorrow and desolation that come to sit 
at the hearthstone may be followed by this 
consolation — ^born of hope, faith and belief 
— that Sudden Death revealed itself, not as a 
shape of grisly horror, but a thing of eternal 
pity and tenderness. 



THE SXJBMERGED 

During the coming summer nights, when 
the air is so clear that the color of the skies 
seems to submerge the world, gazing upward 
tlu'ough the sea of crystalline blue you will be- 
hold the firmament in all its regal glory mov- 
ing onward in its eternal way. Star gazing 
is no idle occupation, though the trival or the 
purely material person may so regard it. 

The vast and impressive spectacle compels 
thought. Stirred by a vague sense of the In- 
finite, the trivial person perhaps will say "It's 
grand!" And feeling that he is face to face 
with an enigma he can never hope to solve, 
he dismisses it for the consideration of things 
nearer at hand and less perplexing. 

To him who sees even in the minutest work- 
ing of nature a manifestation of symmetrical 
and immutable Law the nocturnal sky is a 
region of fathomless delights, unutterable 
ecstasies, bringing to one an overpowering 
sense of the boundless and an awed realiza- 

38 



84 LOOK UE 

tion that man, puny man himself, is part of it. 

When the star-lust enters into the isoul of 
man and millions of sidereal hands beseech and 
beckon, the desire seizes him to fly, to spurn 
the earth, soar untrammelled above it and 
swoon beneath the kiss of the stars. 

Mythology tells how adventurous ones tried 
to fly — and failed. Yet this spirit has become 
stronger in man as he has advanced in knowl- 
edge. It is an outward expression of the soul's 
struggle to rise higher and higher as well as 
the material instinct in man to overcome, to 
accomplish, to conquer. 

Still, if we may not fly we can climb. So, 
we are a race of climbers; not like the ape 
that is content to swing from hmb to limb 
in purposeless play, but, still burning with 
star lust, mounting as high toward the goal 
as the dizziest of mountain peaks wiQ. per- 
mit us. 

The way to the eidelweiss is marked by the 
footprints of the dead. So it is written, not 
only of the grim rocks that thrust themselves 
into the blue sohtudes, but of the higher, more 
awe-inspiring heights reared and scaled by the 
wit of man. The list of Alpine climbers who 



THE SUBMERGED 35 

have lost their hves is appalling, and yet this 
grim roster has not in the least daunted hun- 
dreds of others just as eager to face the peril 
for the mere satisfaction of "overcoming a 
mountain" and looking down upon the earth 
as one that is not a part of it. 

Rare delights are the reward of the climher. 
Often from his height he looks out upon a 
billowy expanse, white as snow and flecked 
by the sun with rose and gold, a silent sea be- 
neath which the rest of the world lies sub- 
merged. 

Andrew^ Carnegie must have had such a 
spectacle in view when in discussing the virtues 
of climbing he spoke of the "submerged tenth." 
He declared that he was determined to aid only 
those who climb. A man who reads that he 
might benefit thereby is a promising climber, 
in truth. Said the ironmaster: — 

"A library requires the recipient to read and 
study. He becomes more sensible and rises in 
the social scale. I have little faith in benefiting 
people who do not benefit themselves. You 
cannot boost a man up the ladder unless he 
does some of the climbing himself. If people 
read they will soon learn how to better the 



36 LOOK UP 

conditions under .which they live. In other 
words, the only way to improve the submerged 
tenth is to improve their tastes and habits." 

Very often the task is tedious and torturing. 
Footsore and exhausted, the cMmber feels like 
stopping and abandoning the task. But the 
stars smile and beckon, his heart becomes 
stronger and his soul Hghter and he resumes 
his toilsome way. 

Look backward to the birth of Christ and 
you will see what obstacles and what horrors 
have filled the way. Look forward and, in- 
deed, you will behold the way stretches out to 
the triumphant stars. 



GHOSTS 

This — October — is the ghost-tide of the year, 
when field, mountain, valley and woodland are 
full of vague, whispering phantoms. Most of 
us beheve in ghosts, and where we refuse to do 
so the doubt is not so firmly implanted that 
conviction is impossible of makiug. The self- 
sacrifice and bravery of the Japanese and other 
quahties, which are fused into intense patriot- 
ism, are based on the belief in the conscious 
presence of departed spirits. 

The wisest men in Western thought cannot 
prove that they are wrong; for what do we 
know o£ those who have passed away over the 
gray rim of the world? A society composed 
of some of the most skilful investigators in 
psychical science has been years endeavoring 
to solve the problem. Marvellous manifesta- 
tions have they disclosed, but the riddle still 
remains unanswered. 

Still, we who have sensibility, who have lov- 
ed and suffered, and for whom memory creates 

m 



C8 LOOK UP 

a realm whose people, never die — ^we are sur- 
rounded by ghosts. The scent of a flower, a 
strain of music, a particular blending of colors, 
an effect of cloud and water, a flying glimpse 
of landscape, may cause them to come before 
us, bringing mth them the joys and smiles of 
Nevermore, the tears and the regrets. 

The late Professor Munsterberg, of Har- 
vard, declared that what impressed him most 
concerning life was its unreality. A day filled 
with the activities of our lives passes, never 
to return. When it becomes past it is as unreal 
as though it had never happened — indeed, like 
a thing imagined. So each day passes, as .good 
Omar has aptly said, "a shadow show." 

We, too, are shadows of all of our yesterdays 
and are only real in the eternal present. 

Let us believe in ghosts, if we will. They 
are our dearest companions, even though wan 
with griefs and suffering. 

Take memory away and the whole throng 
which has filled our lives is exorcised. And 
who that can face conscience squarely would 
care to live without memory? 

Our ghosts influence our lives, perhaps not 



GHOSTS 39 

as directly as in the case of the Japanese, but 
oftentimes just as effectively. Now that the 
spectres of the field and upland are flitting 
one feels the ah' full of strange presences. 

In the chill mists that rise from brake and 
swale, and shrink before the mild passion of the 
autumn sun, there are hosts of pale, regretful 
spectres. One, who knows the moods of Na- 
ture and has shared her confidences, may see 
them and! feel their son^ow. 

The crimson of the maple, the mountain 
birch and the sumach, those gorgeous funeral 
fires which flame the pyxe of summer, call up 
innumerable ghosts — ^wraiths of the langour- 
ous, full flowered, serene days that have pass- 
ed into the shadowland. 

The radiant youth of the year, joyous with 
the bewitching odor of hope, has grown into 
the fecund maturity of summer, and summer 
has waned and palsied under the growing chill 
of the end. 

Into the shroud is woven a wondrous thren- 
ody of color, the very pomp of death! 

Ghosts of summer! Time of radiance and 
sunshine; time of the heart's elation, of its in- 



40 LOOK UP 

effable content; time of sapphire and ruby, 
now expired! 

Into the flame, which blazons its passing 
God sends fluttering a golden benediction. 



"CY" PERKINS AND THE BIG CITY 

A king in tatters was "Cy" Perkins, and 
when he died it developed that he had amassed 
$1,000,000. He lived in New Hampshire, and 
carried his garden truck to market in a prim- 
itive wagon drawn by oxen. He owned land 
and knew how to sell to advantage and invest 
his money. He was frugal, his wants were few 
and he was happy in his homely activities. Had 
he been so minded he might have moved to the 
city, spent his advanced years in "rest" and 
died of a disordered liver. 

But the city had no lure for him. He re- 
garded it as an enemy, a vampire which sucked 
the souls from men. 

Yet he strove and put by just as did the men 
of the city, with this difference, closeness to 
nature had broadened while it narrowed him. 

He was inflexibly honest and had a bitter 
aversion to those things, which, in his eyes, 
made man artificial. So it was he hated the 
city. Many of us prisoned therein have looked 

41 



42 LOOK UP 

upon it in our dark moments and felt the same 
aversion rising witliin us. 

Houses huddled together secretively, in an 
unfriendly companionship, jealous of each inch 
of the cumbered earth; nxed, immobile things, 
wliich nevertheless take on the expression of 
character; the hives and the homes of men, 
ordered by rule and compass; so much space 
and light and air grudgingly allotted, as 
though the sun did not shine for all and the 
world itself were not dressed in the flowing 
draperies of the TOnds. 

The touch of man is sordid, and in the pic- 
ture that one beholds in gazing at the city 
from a liigh place this impression comes min- 
gled with a feehng of wonderment. The sun 
ghnts on the roofs and plays mar\^ellous tricks 
of high light and shadow. Snowy vapors rise, 
the spirits of an enchanted place, and, throw- 
ing their arms wide in the air, slowly expire 
and vanish. 

Here and there kingly piles, spurning the 
democracy of uniformity, rear themselves 
proudly to the skies and look ^vith hundreds 
of steady eyes on the wdde huddle beneath 
them. Here, too, is shoT\Ti the caste, the char- 



"GY" PERKINS 43 

acter of men manifested in brick and wood, in 
stone and steel. 

There is something both impressive and sad- 
dening in this view of a city from above — a 
sense of tremendous activity held in so many 
shells, a vast storage place of wonderful cur- 
rents of human electricity which do and undo 
and make eternally for joy or for sorrow; a 
place of effort, of stress and travail, a place 
iwhose energies bind one to the earth, a slave to 
pitiless tasks. 

As the eye wanders to where the stern army 
thins away and houses finally detach them- 
selves, as though eager to escape to the fields 
and hills beyond, one feels the charm of hbera- 
tion, of expansion, of the uplift which nature 
always gives. Verdure cools and refreshes the 
tired eye and the silver of flowing waters is 
burnished by the sun. 

Now in June is the time when the spell of 
the woods and waters is upon us and we ac- 
tually turn from the city to seek the grateful 
green places and sail in the crystal quiet of 
secluded streams, the rich and the poor alike. 
And yet that man is richest who finds the 
greatest content in nature. 



44 LOOK UP 

Dollars may build a palace grotesque ^\dtli 
the vanities of man or embodying the fairest 
dreams of beauty that arise from the- soul, but 
they cannot buy that mysterious thrill, that 
exquisite obsession, which comes to liim who 
looks with open eyes on Nature and reads her 
eternal lesson. 

"Cy" Perkins' million dollars did not make 
him any richer than he really was. They re- 
presented his natural Yankee thrift, and he 
would not have exchanged liis wooden home for 
the princeliest pile of stone. Tattered, primi- 
tive in his taste, he was none the less blessed 
among men in that he yearned for nothing that 
he had not, and was perfectly happy with what 
he possessed. 

Of how many of us is this true! 



HELLO! "MISS LIZZIE!" 

A woman who can make perfect bread which 
recalls the kind that came from mother's hands ; 
she who is the model of housewives or the good 
soul who is a tender hearted but discriminat- 
ing mother, is hardly less important in her 
respective spheres than the woman who directs 
her activities to business life and succeeds to 
the fullest measure. 

Some women are peculiarly adapted to home 
life and fulfil its functions naturally and flu- 
ently; others find domesticity full of irritations 
and sharp angles, and consequently their lives 
are filled with harsh discords. 

Few of us possess perfect self-control; and, 
because of their very make-up, women do not 
stand boldly forward as exemplars. Yet, in 
the complex development of modern life, is 
being fashioned a type of woman, highly 
specialized, who, under cold material influ- 
ences, has k>st little of the charm of the sweet 
maid of long ago. 

45 



46 LOOK UP 

Doubtless Phyllis and Dorothy fitted per- 
fectly into the substantial, picturesque frame 
of that day. But the world is going onward 
at a dizzy speed, and the new conditions that 
arise either create new types or so modify the 
old that they, in fact, become new. 

Time was when the Telephone Girl was re- 
garded as an inconsequential and perhaps un- 
necessary part of a peculiarly modern acti\'ity. 
Now she has grown to be a vital factor, and, in 
this hne of work, like all others which require 
quick intelligence, calm judgment and cool 
self-control, the best brains are bound to tell. 
Thus some telephone girls are queens of the 
calling, for capable operators' wear the ermine 
of merit. 

The other day a Canadian millionaire, ob- 
serving the perfect method and poise of a 
young woman at a hotel switchboard, made 
her his bride. Every capable telephone girl 
deserves a millionaire for a husband, provid- 
ed, of course, be is a man of brains, morals 
and healthful activities. In return for his 
T\^ealth and devotion the wealthy man gets a 
helpmeet who has been tested in one of the 



. HELLO! "MISS LIZZIE!" 47 

most trying schools of modem utility — and 
found to be true gold. 

A young woman who can handle during a 
day's work nearly five thousand inward and 
outward calls of a great establishment, whose 
organization covers the entire world, is a per- 
son of no small importance in the make-up of 
this gigantic organism. She is the storm cen- 
tre of voices that come out of the invisible — 
voices reflecting every variety of temperament 
— ^the suave, mild, gentle and uncomplaining, 
the petulant, blustering, impatient and uncivil. 

Eight long, turbulent hours in aural touch 
with good humor and bad, often harried, some- 
times abused, the perfect operator seldom, if 
ever, loses her poise, and her control is such 
that the even, low modulation of her voice sel- 
dom varies. 

If it were a general thing that fair candi- 
dates for marriage had to undergo this rigor- 
ous test, it is safe to say that an amazing 
majority of them would fail absolutely. Small 
wonder it is that keen millionaires and other 
shrewd men, who are not millionaires, should 
realize the value of the "test by telephone." 
This is the reason that "Miss Lizzie" has gone. 



48 LOOK UP 

and every man or woman in the great estab- 
lishment is genuinely regretful. 

There were even tears when the time for 
parting came. It seemed as though quite an es- 
sential part of the establishment was being 
taken away. But what is one man's loss is 
another's gain. That is a trite saying, but the 
truth of it constantly is brought home to us. 
The man at whose hearthstone "Miss Lizzie" 
goes to sit will know the truth of it, and she 
in turn will pass to future generations the per- 
sonal lessons she mastered so well. 

This is but an incident, which is probably 
being duplicated from day to day all over the 
country ;^ but, to those who regard human work 
seriously and who watch with care its complex 
development and its effects on the social life, 
it assumes no small value. 

It shows, too, that the cheerful "Helios !" in 
life are the bright floweus of sound which give 
color and music to an otherwise prosaic retro- 
spect. 



LITTLE TRAGEDY 

A Persian kitten died in New York a few 
days ago, despite all modern science could 
do to save it. And when its little life faded 
away the shadow of a tragedy fell upon the 
household. It was as though a human life 
had gone out, and the grief was real and poig- 
nant. 

Let not those scoff who deem the bereave- 
ment of these good folk morbid or hysterical. 
The pet was an influence which made for af- 
fection, kindness and consideration. The at- 
tachment for it brought out nothing that was 
not best, and in the affection bestowed upon 
the kitten the family were united in a common 

joy. 

A eat or a dog has often meant more to the 
happiness of a family than men with small 
hearts will ever be able to imagine. There is 
something so sublime in the devotion of a 
dumb beast that the highest praise that can 
be said of a man is that he loved or befriended 

49 



50 LOOX UP 

with brute-like devotion. He who is kind to 
animals is sure to have a warm heart for his 
fellows. 

Now a Persian kitten is a mere baby cat, 
if you Yvdll, and scarcely worth the considera- 
tion of so many words, but this case deals wdth 
human hearts, as well, and is therefore direct 
in its appeal. 

To those who loved her. Pansy looked like 
a bundle of silver floss. Her eyes were as 
green jade, large and wide apart, and, as sun- 
hght and shadow touched them, they were 
shot with gold or deepened into sapphire, calm 
and deep as the summer seas when the winds 
are asleep. Her belly was as white as the 
hermit snow on unsealed mountain peaks, and 
her long, bushy tail swayed in the rhythm of 
her moods Hke the fan of a beauty conscious 
of her charms. 

Her httle feet were broad and rounded, T\dth 
long tufts of silken fur between the "toes," as 
though she were shod for continual ^^dnter. 
Thin as a wafer were her ears, faintly pink, 
like the ros^e of dawn that the sea shell holds. 
Her face came to a point in a delicate, patri- 
cian chin, and the nose, a tiny point tipped 



LITTLE TRAGEDY 51 

with black, showed much of the long years of 
breeding that fined her down to a flesh and 
blood toy. 

When the morning hour arrived she woke 
her mistress by a method so poetic that it 
must have come down through the lost years 
from the joyous time of Hafiz, who saw in the 
world about hioi nothing but beauty and love. 
To arouse her mistress she gently touched the 
eyelids of the sleeper with her tongue — ^kissed 
sleep from the eyes that loved to behold her. 

She seemed as much a stranger in the sur- 
roundings of a modem flat as though she were 
a veiled lady from a harem. One looked on 
her sensuous beauty and thought of the magni- 
ficent tiled palaces of Susa and Persepolis ; of 
symbolism wrought in weavings which consum- 
ed a lifetime ; of rare carvings, cunning inlay- 
iQgs and wonderfully iQuminated manuscripts ; 
of the groves and gardens of Shiraz, where 
wise Sa'di made song and wisdom, which find 
a renewing spring in the birth of eadi year of 
the newest century. 

The affection given now to dumb pets is 
not a recent growth. Puss has been a comfort 
and an inspiration for centuries. Ibn Alalaf, 



52 LOOK UE 

who himself o\^Tied a Persian eat long before 
the new world was found, expressed a grief 
over her taking away wliich has survived while 

^vhole dynasties have passed away and kingly 
cities blown to dust : — 

Poor puss is gone! 'Tis fate's decree, 
Yet I must still her loss deplore. 

For dearer than a cliild- was she 
And ne'er shall I behold her more. 
The love of animals is one of the most beau- 
tiful traits in us humans. Woman's very 
make-up gives her aptitudes for love and af- 
fection. Whether she give affection to an in- 
animate keepsake or artistic creation; whether 
it be to a honse, a dog or a cat, there is some- 
thing comforting in the fact, something hu- 
manizing and tender. The heart is niot a prison 
to hold healthful emotions which mil ^vither 
for lack of hght azid freedom and, -v^athering, 
finally destroy the shfell that prisons them. 



LITTLE LURES 

A pretty bookkeeper with a tooth as sweet 
as her smile and a complexion that suggested 
strawberries and cream — of which she was pas- 
sionately fond — was, at one time, in sore dis- 
tress because of this fact and few others of the 
same relative importance. Her employer ac- 
cused her of taking, in occasional small 
amounts, the sum of two hundred dollars. She 
denied she took that amount, but admitted that 
what she did appropriate was spent for candy, 
soda and ice cream. 

The simphcity of explanation was feminine, 
of course, but the employer looked upon the 
act as though a strange thief had come into 
the establishment and robbed the safe. So the 
young woman, who was inclined to look at the 
matter from merely a candy, soda and ice 
cream standpoint, found herself in an unen- 
viable position. 

That she should have been brought to such 
straits by candy, soda and cream may seem to 

53 



54 LOOK UP 

some persons quite out of rational proportion. 
And yet this case stands as a fair type of the 
many. She who looks into the eyes of temp- 
tation is inviting disaster. The wisest part is 
to turn from it. 

Don't neglect to guard jealously against 
small imperfections. Pygmy weaknesses soon 
hold one in a giant grasp. 

Temptation is a protean thing which shapes 
itself to meet every mood of man; to encom- 
pass him on every hand ; to obsess him in wak- 
ing and fill his dreams with its insistent lure. 
It is with the humblest callings of earth; it is 
a sinister force with the highest. 

From the time we distinguish right from 
wrong, to the hour when we are in darkness 
of doubt as to which is which ; from hotly beset 
youth to the lull of old age, temptation still 
besets us. And so it will continue while the 
heart beats and we are governed by human 
motives and aims. 

Temptation not only concerns overt acts 
and concrete things, for it often befalls that 
the most desperate struggles, the most terrible 
plunges into depths that know no sounding, 
take place in the secrecy of a man's soul. 



LITTLE LURES '5.5. 

Whereas in yielding many persons commit 
crimes against the person, against property 
or violate the moral code, there are yet others 
whose abasement lies in a single word. A 
"Yes'' or "No," which leads the way from 
truth, small as is the utterance, carries the pos- 
sibilities of a world of woe. 

Right stands fair and changeless throughout 
the ages. It is thus because Right is Right. 
It is the fixed star that holds us steadily to 
our upward faring. 

A venerable carving m a European museum, 
shows Utysses bound to the mast of his ship to 
prevent him leaping overboard to the call of 
the syrens. There is syren fascination about 
wrong which calls for the same rigorous meas- 
ures. One may bind himself mth the bonds of 
liigh purpose so that temptation may not avail, 
whether it be the lure of dishonest fortune, 
personal ambition unworthil} realized or — 
candy, soda and ice cream! 



LO, THE PARASITES! 

Andrew Carnegie may have been a shade 
too severe in one of his addresses wherein he 
stigmatized stock speculators of the land as pa- 
rasites. Any man honestly engaged in that Hne 
of activity may deem that he exercises a whole- 
some and necessary function toward the rest of 
society; but, Mr. Carnegie, who saw with a 
clear vision the relation of even the simplest 
things to the perfect whole, evidently had 
weighed the question well before he made the 
expression. 

"The world," said he, "is not advanced by 
the man in that large department of business 
which is mere gambhng in stocks. They are 
parasites feeding on business." 

The crime which Nature treats with relent- 
less severity, the gravest offence against the 
Law, is parasitism. It receives the «ame inflexi- 
ble treatment through all the forms of nature, 
from the thing that lives in the black night of 
the mud, to the man, who, vaunting himself 

56 



LO, THE PARASITES I 57 

above other men, lives in silken comfort on 
their labor. 

"Parasites are the paupers of nature/' says 
Drummond. "They are the forms of life which 
will not take the trouble to find food, but bor- 
row or steal it from the more iadustrious."' 

It will be seen at once that the parasite is 
the type of selfish unproductiveness and of 
hopeless degeneration. A human parasite is a 
melancholy and a tragic thing, whether he be 
an eminent stock speculator or the restless vag- 
abond, whose roof is the sky and whose couch 
is the earth, from which he sprang. Both com- 
mit the sin of unproductiveness. 

Embryology shows that many a parasite 
starts out, like many a man, with the best in- 
tention, which, if persisted in, would carry it 
to succeedingly higher levels of activity and 
development; but it finds living easy and set- 
tles down to take existence serenely at the ex- 
pense of others, exerting none of its functions 
save to draw in sustenance. 

Inaction and disuse may cause the eyes, legs 
and jaws to waste away and finally drop off, so 
that in time it often becomes a mere torpid 
sac, a low, detestable thing. 



58 LOOK UP 

So it is with the man who, ignoring the law 
of evolution, gives no conscious effort to the 
bettering, sustaining or extending the great 
social plan of which he is a part, but, wilfully 
unproductive^ sits down and draws his susten- 
ance from others. He may deem himself clev- 
erer than his fellows, who toil and produce, 
who expend effort in achieving and going for- 
ward; but Nature treats all of her children 
with terrible impartiahty, and, while the man 
parasite may not lose his physical hands and 
feet, eyes, ears and jaws, he nevertheless suf- 
fers a corresponding moral loss, so that, at 
last, he is likely to become a human sac, slug- 
gish and incapable of a sensation and the ela- 
tions which act upon progressive mankind. 

The whole lesson of Nature is production. 
It is manifested in the myriad forms of life, 
from the infinitesimal mite, which moves under 
the microscope, to man, who is made in the 
image of God. 

As it is a great function of nature, so also 
is it that of society. Parasites have no welcome 
part in the great scheme, which is the world's 
expression of force, of effort and of life, itself. 



BRIDGING THE AGES 

The black savage, into whose ears rang the 
deafening thunder of the great Victoria Falls, 
and who witnessed the tremendous power of its 
swift waters, conceived that a great spirit dwelt 
there, a giant whose strength could defy the 
whole world of men. Sometimes it was in the 
water, but more often in the changeful mist 
which filled the gorge and took on fairy hues 
in the sunshine. The cliffs are 420 feet above 
the river, and it was a daring mind that con- 
ceived the scheme to span them. 

And the thing has been done. Really big 
deeds are chary of words, from the laconism 
of C^sar, "I came, I saw, I conquered!" to the 
historical sentence of Morse, ''What hath God 
wrought?" flashed over Mie first telegraph line. 
The spanning of the Zambesi River, in far 
Africa, is of tremendous interest to the rest of 
the world, for it is a gigantic part in an opera- 
tion that will change the heart of a savage 
continent. 

59 



60 LOOK UP 

The Cape to Cairo railroad is a civilized ar- 
tery through Africa, sending out its activities 
and enlightenment on all sides, opening up pos- 
sibilities of development and riches surpassing 
the legendary King Solomon's mines. Yet the 
great feat when accomplished was announced 
in a cable despatch of fourteen words : 

The Victoria Falls railroad bridge, 

projecting from either chff, was safely 

joined this morning. 

Long, unceasing labor, at last, had spun a 
web of steel across the cataract. As the final 
rivet was driven into place and the structure 
stood hardly less firm than the basaltic cliff, a 
mind observing the movement of world prog- 
ress, looking down from, the vertiginous 
height to the white chaos below, must have felt 
profoundly impressed upon it a sense of im- 
mense contrast. 

The awful power of the world's greatest 
waterfall, typical of nature in its wildest and 
most sublime aspect, stood as a magnificent ex- 
hibition of force. Above it the emblem of All 
Conquering Thought, the sign of achieving 
man, who was to make the imperial power of 
the cataract bend to the yoke so that its energy 



BRIDGING THE AGES 61 

would eventually shape itself into light to 
make day in the darkness; into heat that, 
breathing upon the secret deep (\^rested from 
the bosom of the earth, would fuse it into pure 
gold ; into power, subtle, soundless and unseen, 
which would turn millions of wheels and send, 
myriad shuttles chattering backward and for- 
ward in the active joy of production — power 
that would carry the hard earned treasure from 
forest and mountain and the abundant offer- 
ings of the fields and the rivers. 

And from its widest expression will yet de- 
velop more fully another power — ^that which 
puts into the mind of man dreams so daring 
that he may scale the heights of the stars ; for 
it is the power of Progress — ^invincible as the 
sun itself. 

And now the spirit of the falls, before 
which the black savage trembled, has been con- 
quered by men perhaps not half so hardy, but 
equipped with mental weapons which are 
changing the face and the nature of the world. 

From the simple savage thought to the 
thought which thinks out and constructs the 
highest bridge in the world is more than a two 
thousand year span in the evolution of man. 



62 LOOK UP 

So great is the prodigy of modem progress 
that, in the driving of a single rivet, a land and 
a people may be suddenly whisked through the 
dust of twenty centuries and blinded and be- 
wildered by the light, be thrust into the active 
and pulsing world of to-day. 

What miracle of the past has ever equalled 
this? 



FELLOWSHIP OF DOLLARS 

Anatomy deals with the structure of the 
body; physiology the functions of the various 
organs — facts which every grammar school 
pupil knows. They are set forth here to illus- 
trate a point which Andrew Carnegie once de- 
veloped. The great ironmaster more than any 
other man of his time knew the anatomy and 
physiology of the dollar. 

He knew that it may have personality and a 
capacity for good or evil, hke a flesh and blood 
man. A dollar may be endowed with deeply 
human qualities and it may, on the other hand, 
be absolutely heartless. 

It makes sacred links in the fellowship of 
man when wielded by a generous, noble hand. 
Truly, said the greatest of the world's givers: 

"There is not much in dollars if you do not 
become attracted to your fellows. If you are 
true to the judge within you, you need have no 
fear of the Judge hereafter." 

A man who possesses the wealth of the world 

63 



64 LOOK UP 

and yet has no sympathetic kinship with the 
rest of mankind is as poor as the most luckless 
beggar. 

Dollars take a new value when moved by 
humane impulse or high ideals. 

Touched with the warmth of life they be- 
come living things. 

The greatest joy of wealth is the power to 
do good for others — in "exercising your 
money for human fellowship." 

The question of dollars is as broad as hu- 
manity. They stand for so much given of 
thought, of energy, of toil; the token, also, of 
love, hate and all the passions which bum or 
lash us. 

How dollars may obsess a man and pervert 
his nature is told in the little tragedies that ap- 
pear day after day in the newspapers — stories 
of lost honor, of hypocrisy and crime. 

Maurus Jokai in one of his novels, which 
presented a profound and subtle study of a 
human soul, makes his hero establish a settle- 
ment — a place of idyllic simplicity and calm — 
from which money is rigidly excluded. The 
products are bartered for articles needed by 
the dwellers. Money had caused the moral 



FELLOWSHIP OF DOLLARS 

downfall of the man who devised the scheme, 
and, by banishing it from the island, he hoped 
to keep out the black evils which follow it. 

Dollars are beautified by a saint's counten- 
ance or sinister with the face of a demon, as 
you wish. 

Dollars I We eat them, we wear them, we 
live them, we die them! Civilization has made 
them the measure of human life and death. 

They are clothed with a beautiful aspect "if 
you are true to the judge within you" — ^the 
mentor whose say is unfailingly just and up- 
right. 

No man of plenty who hearkens to the voice 
can ever be a niggard or fail to be attracted to 
his fellows. 

Mr. Carnegie knew, to an infinitesimal frac- 
tion, what was in a dollar and all that it might 
accomplish. 

By his own statement he knew, also, when it 
was mere dross. In this was he blessed, for he 
o^Tied a gift beyond the value of gold — a some" 
tiling that made for his happiness and that of 
his fellows, who, should no book of his many 
libraries stimulate them, will still find in him 
an inspiration and a message comprehended 
only in the library of a great heart. 



OUR ANIMAL FRIENDS 

Like a page of some mediaeval romance read 
the disclosure of the death of an aged New 
York woman surromided by six black cats, 
which fiercely assailed all who approached the 
body. An eerie sight it must have been as the 
body lay there, guarded by the pets she had 
loved so well, to whom she had given confi- 
dences and who knew her heart even better 
than the humans with whom she came in con- 
tact from time to time. 

We get the most unquestioning fellowship 
from dumb animals, which know neither guile 
nor hypocritical shifting, but which are as fix- 
ed in their attachments as the magnetic needle 
is towards the North. And in this the dumb 
beast may teach man many a lesson. 

Even the learned may acquire wisdom 
from either a cat or a dog; and this idea is 
admirably worked out in Kingsley's "Hy- 
patia," wherein one of the characters, who is 
so full of knowledge that doubts beset him, 

66 



OUR ANIMAL FRIENDS 67 

! 

resolves to make a companion and confidant 
of his dog and to be guided alone by the wis- 
dom of the beast. And he did not choose ill I 

Love for the cat is not so general. TheBe 
is something so stealthy, so sinuous, so sug- 
gestive of hidden things that, as in the earlier 
belief, some people regard the cat with in- 
stinctive aversion. But to those who look with 
open minds, it is a symbol of caressing, sin- 
uous grace; a tender, devoted friend, dehcate- 
ly sympathetic at all times and possessing 
sometiiing of a feminine charm. 

Recent study into the nature of the cat has 
revealed many new beauties. Animal study, 
itself, shows that our minds are being broaden- 
ed to the wonders of Hf e by which vv^e are sur- 
rounded. Had this aged woman so died in the 
Dark Ages, doubtless she would have been con- 
sidered a witch and her faithful cats as demons 
come to claim her soul. A wonderful legend 
might have sprung from the incident, ap- 
parently authenticated by ignorant folk who 
had witnessed the occurrence. 

Ignorance and superstition have given way 
before education, the light of science and a 
closer knowledge of familiar things. But su- 



68 LOOK UP 

perstition is an almost ineradicable blemish in 
the limnan make-up, and, even to-day, there 
may be some who look upon the manner in 
which this old woman died as a happening of 
evil portent. 

We, who look ahead at the bright and ever 
lengthening vista of progress, should feel a 
deep joy in knowing that these benighted ones 
are few and see in this melancholy happening a 
lesson which is full of meaning to those who 
try to live a life of proper and just relation 
to the rest of mankind. 

A cat, though lacking the highly specialized 
mind of modem human beings, nevertheless, 
with its limited equipment* may, unconsciously 
realize the philosophy and even religions that 
have been taught for ages for the moral uplift 
of man. Thus it is that we might receive some 
pregnant lessons from the lower forms of Kfe. 

Instead of being an unhallowed picture, the 
death of the old woman was an incident with 
infinite grief and pity, v/herein Death, quiet 
and stealthy of tread as a cat itself, empha- 
sized the bond between mankind and the brute. 



[A WOMAN'S TRAGEDY 

I am a widow, thirty-six, so really cannot call 
myself an old woman. I am writing to ask 
whether is there any place for a woman who is 
passe, who is no longer young? 

I was for some years connected with the 
stage. A severe illness left me lame, and i then 
followed posing at which I made a fair living. 
I then lost home, child and annuity, all at once ; 
and the shock gave me nervous prostration. 
Since that time I have not been able to do any 
posing. 

The terrible shock of my daughter's death 
left me for two years quite deaf. At that time, 
which is now nearly four years ago, I was 
cashier in a prominent hotel, but had to give 
that up on account of my defective hearing. 

Nearly everything seemed shut off from me. 
I am at an age too young for an old wom'an's 
home, but not young enough to get a position 
as an office clerk. In fact, I see nothing, but 
clouds' gathering, blacker and blacker and no 
clearing away. As to sunshine, that I dare not 
anticipate. Oh, will you, can yoiu, tell me is 
there anything for one in my position to do ; or 
is there a place for me? 

69 



70 LOOK UP 

Heaven knows I am willing to work, but have 
- lost all mj family and am utterly alone, 

I try very hard to live in the present and let 
the dead past bury its dead. To' forget is 
easier said than done. For any advice you may 
offer I shall indeed be more than grateful. 

(Signed) RUTH 

Here is a humgin cry of pain, and it must 
touch every heart that hears* it. In it the whole 
round of our little lives is summed up, only 
the shade of a tragedy lies most heavily upon it. 
It is the cry of a woman, poignant with grief 
and anguish, yet still bearing with* it something 
of hope, that divine inspiration which makes 
us look upward, even when on the brink of the 
great abyss. 

A wounded soldier of a victorious army falls 
by the wayside, while the great host sweeps 
onward. Maimed and bleeding, torn at by 
hunger and tortured by thirst, smitten by the 
relentless sun and choked by the whirling dust, 
he lies there doomed to death if no one goes to 
his succor. But hope takes some of the burn- 
ing keenness from the edge of his torture, and, 
even in the last deliriimi that passes through 
his disordered mind, he believes that help is at 



A WOMAN'S TRAGEDY 71 

hand! Then darkness. So it is with unnoted 
thousands in the battle of life. 

The world is going forward at a tremendous 
pace^ and, in the great onrush, where numbers 
are not overwhelmed and crushed under foot, 
they gradually fall exhausted and wounded by 
the way. The burden of years, Hke the heavy 
equipment of the soldier, proves too much of a 
handicap; and yet where the one may throw 
the staggering weight aside, the other cannot 
^ — ^not any more than he escape from himself, 
of which age is a greater part. 

The whole world is covered with those who 
have fallen behind, but with superb courage 
are wilhng to continue (Struggling with their 
last breath. Sometimes they hold with a mate 
and dogged persistency. Again, the bitterness 
and enigma of the thing arouses some expres- 
sion that reaches far. 

"Is there any place for a woman who is 
passe, who is no longer young?" 

The answer springing instinctively from 
every human heart is that, in this great world, 
overflowing with richness and in the noon-day 
light of the highest s'ocial and scientific pro- 
gress, there is a place for every human crea- 



72 LOOK UP 

ture. For as society grows in its complexities, 
its sjTnpathies broaden and deepen. 

R-ome, in the zenith of its glory had no 
hospitals, yet to-day the world's heart never 
beat warmer for the common cause which is 
the ALL cause — no one being too humble or 
too unblest to share in its composite benefits. 

Age comes like a benediction to some lives; 
to others it brings tragedy, overilo\\dng with 
bitterness. From afar it is apt to be regarded 
as the calm evening glow of life, full serenity 
and repose and that depthless joy which fills 
the soul, and, in the stillness of the evening 
hour, beholds in the sunset raptures unseen by 
the common eye. 

It is also true that some regard age as a 
malady, which, added to other afflictions of the 
body, makes a woeful lot Ajid yet, in the 
darkest hour, if one thing survives then mis- 
fortune is not without some compensation. 
Hope even burns brightest in the darkest hour. 
It is the divine spirit, with up -reaching hands, 
bom of the very humanity that is witliin our- 
selves and a belief in the omnipotence of the 
Almighty and the humanity of man. 

When a cry arises like this, sharp with pain 



A Yv^OMAN'S TRAGEDY 

and suffering, but yet still mingled with a 
hopeful sob, there are ears to hear and noble 
hearts to respond. It is this thought which 
makes life bearable during the blackest hours 
of misfortune. 



DUKES AND OTHERS 

A Duke cannot help being a Duke any more 
than a poor boy can avoid being the son of his 
father. Both are born to it. Neither should be 
blamed or discriminated against because of this 
fact alone. Andrew Carnegie evidently had 
this well in mind when he declared he would 
much prefer to have his niece wed to an honest, 
intelligent coachman than a "worthless Duke." 

There are Dukes and Dukes. Some of us 
admire titles. The love of them seems to be 
innate in woman, because they are something in 
the way of exclusive ornament, v/hich may be 
worn like a beautiful cloak or goT^Ti — exalted 
badges of station, which clothe their wearers 
v^th superiority and are esteemed to be out- 
ward sign of merit. 

But the fact is that titles, at most, are in- 
tangible things, shaped in the mind and play- 
ing no actual part in the world's economy. 
Title cannot make a man — ^it often unmakes 
him. The best title a man may have comes 

74 



DUKES AND OTHERS 75 

from his own merit, his own virtue, his prowess. 

Born into the world naked, all possibilities 
lie within him — ^the gifts of the Creator. 

In the pink, wrinkled hand of every babe, 
like the mystic crystal which holds visions for 
the seer, reposes the Future, full of unshapen 
events, prodigies, struggle and achievements! 

Mr. Carnegie gave the wholesome American 
view when he sharply indicated that the mere 
fact a man is a Duke is not sufficient to place 
him high in the human scale. A Duke is a Duke 
because we think he is ; because the people who 
yield him his title think he is so. When the 
people cease to think he is so, the distinction 
of the title, the form and pomp of it, and the 
very title itself, will fade like the fabric of a 
dream. 

We, in America, ao not believe in the divine 
right of Kings. Many people of the earth 
still hold the belief; the divine right expresses 
itself to them in flesh and blood actuality, be- 
cause they think it so. 

Mind, a divine endowment, makes all things 
possible. It circles the world, in a pulse beat; 
it whispers under the weltering seas; it rip- 
ples invisible messages to the arching void 



76 LOOK UE 

above the eternal tides ;• from the printed page 
it sparks into the hearts of the world's waking 
miHions. 

When man first began to reason, the race 
started- on its upward journey. It has been on 
the move ever since. This has heen possible 
because the great majority have been Vv-orkers, 
constantly striving to surpass that which had 
gone before. The men who do things will ever 
be the earth's real kings — ^not crovTied with 
empty diadems, but bayed ^4th the love, ad- 
miration and veneration of those who find in 
high ideals a constant inspiration to the best 
endeavor. 

Title cannot give a man character if he have 
it not. There are vrorthless Dukes, just as 
there are worthless men who are not Dukes. 
A coachman or a blacksmith may be one of 
Natures noblemen. He is clothed in the dignity 
of work — work, which has made our civiliza- 
tion a marvelous reality and yet is making for 
others in the future. 

What a sublime privilege the future is! 
We live for it ; we die for it. It is both a pro- 
cessional and a benediction. 



THE SOUL IN THE VOICE 

We do not appreciate the marvels of the 
most familiar things- of life, the most natural 
fmictions which are interwoven with the 
thought and action of every day existence. A 
thought shapes itself in the mind, and, quick as 
a Hghtning flash, it is interpreted into words 
which may sound with the rhythm of music 
or be harsh with the discords of passion. 

Science has delved deep into the mysteries of 
organic and inorganic nature. From the one 
it has brought wonderful secrets of productive 
force, of gro\^i;h, of life; from the other it has 
produced prodigies of chemistry and freed gi- 
gantic and awesome forces — Titans of destruc- 
tion which now play so complete a part in 
modem war. 

As the greatest study for man is man, the 
scrutiny that has been turned upon him has 
been productive of revelations so astounding 
that the mind can scarcely grasp them. Hu- 

77 



78 LOOK UP 

man life is full of marvels, and one of the 
greatest of these is speech. 

Emil Sutro, a patient investigator, daring 
and original in method, gave a great impetus 
to the study of the voice as a spiritual medium. 
One reading his most interesting work cannot 
fail to be deeply inpressed by the marvel of 
this most simple of things, which is yet the 
most complex. 

The voice can be cultivated so that it may 
express most accurately every subtlety of feel- 
ing, every emotion, and even bring, vibrating 
from the depths of the soul, that w^hich no 
word can compass. 

A voice may be golden ; it may be silvern, or 
it may ring mth the cold sharpness of steel. 
It may bring laughter or tears, and, being 
capable of expressing the rounded circle of 
human nature, it may even go beyond that 
into the world which is not of matter and whose 
outposts are sentinelled by the stars. 

In her voice every woman has a gift even 
more potent than beauty; for beauty withers 
with age, whereas the soul-sweetness of voice 
has remained unaltered to the brink of the 
grave. 



THE SOUL IN- THE VOICE 79 

A Canadian capitalist, widowed and with-« 
out a home, who found in "high class hotel Mfe 
a bitter reminder of the tender comforts once 
enjoyed, was first attracted to the telephone 
girl by the quality of her voice. As of the 
switchboard, she was perfect mistress- of it. She 
never struck a discord. It was restful and 
soothe to hear her when it was not actually 
inspiring. 

This man of three score and ten years, a 
sharp judge of human nature, and who had 
seen the world with alert eyes, wisely conclud- 
ed, that the voice was indicative of the charac- 
ter. So it was that this girl's voice entered his 
hfe and possessed it, twining itself about him 
in a caress of sound. She became his wife. 

This is a pretty story of December and May, 
and, while it serves to illustrate in a measure 
the wonderful gift we have in voice, it is the 
truth. The old adage of silence is being sadly 
misused in these days when the brain develop- 
ment is such that everybody must talk. And 
thus it not infrequently happens that speech 
itself is golden. 



HARMONY OF HEARTS 

All of nature is a divine harmony, which is 
manifested most impressively in the change of 
the seasons, the rise and fall of the ocean tide 
and the swing of the sky's countless hosts 
through the infinite. The same lesson is taught 
to him who looks into the mysteries of chem- 
istry or the awesome power of electricity. 

The highest ideal of society is a harmonious 
whole, to the fulfillment of which, consciously 
and unconsciously, we have given our lives. 
Love is a force greater than any that experi- 
menting man has wrung from the dark recesses 
of nature. It is governed by laws as immutable 
as those that govern the stars or sliape the pass- 
ing seasons. 

It is a law of personal and racial harmony, 
which goes even to the depths of creation and 
moves the hearts of the rich and poor alike. 
Sometimes society has erected obstructions so 
great as to interfere with the operation of the 
law, such as family pride, caste or sordid ma- 

80 



HARMONY OF HEARTS 81 

terial motive. But it is Love that animates life, 
that glows throughout all creation; that 
breathes its magic into the changing races of 
men and stirs even the heart of this great earth 
of ours. 

Love! Those who look upon it with seeing 
eyes and broadened minds realize its sublimity, 
its eternal power, its sacred majesty. Blit 
there are many who regard it rather as a 
malady of the flesh, which* while it may give 
glimpses of rarer altitudes, brings us finally 
to earth. 

The most precious of gifts, it cannot be pur- 
chased. It is given without cost. And, as it 
falls, the pauper is often a prince and the rich 
man a beggar. 

It is the power that was with the dawn of 
creation, though it had neither a beginning as 
it has no end, for it is eternal. Man is born to 
it as he is to the light of day and the free air. 
That we must love and suffer, enjoy and weep, 
is part of the plan. 

Every man must live his own life. It is a 
sacred custodianship with which he has been 
entrusted. He makes bis own happiness or un- 
makes it. iN'ow and then some mind which 



82 LOOK UP 

takes a broad view of the question, superbly 
disarms all artificial distinctions and mates with 
the heart and soul, which, attuned to his, has 
made perfect harmony. 

This is not poetry nor imagery, but plain 
fact, as has been exemplified from time to time, 
one outstanding example being the young 
wealthy man of distinguished lineage who took 
as wife a poor girl whom he met working 
among the poverty-stricken of New York's 
great East Side. 

He saw in her beauties that fairer women 
did not possess and found her wealthy beyond 
any heiress of Belgravia in the abundance of 
her humanities and her capacity of sympathy 
and suffering. 

It is a mistake — ^the days of romance and 
chivalry have not given way to the forces of a 
material age. Romance, which is one of the 
golden chords in the harmony of life, is ever 
sounding in the great song of our complex 
activities. And so it will be forever, while man 
and woman look upon each other and, looking, 
love! 



GOLDEN MIGHT 

Vast wealth is an accumulation of power, 
the influence of which may reach not only the 
broad, open stretches of the world's acti- 
vities, but penetrate into the obscure nooks 
and corners of life seldom blessed by the light. 
It may quicken thousands of hands to the do- 
ing of prodigies of labor in leveling a mountain 
or tearing through its mighty heart. It may 
carry blessings to the lame, the halt and the 
blind* and be an influence so tender, so hu- 
mane, that there is a sympathetic heart-beat 
in every penny. Again, it may be the power 
that sends forth thousands of men to slay one 
another, and, with fire and giant, demon 
forces, make ghastly scars on the face of the 
world. 

These lessons are brought home to us each 
day. Sometimes they directly affect us, but, to 
the average dweller in peace who sees his day's 
duty well done, they seem somewhat remote. 
Yet the power of wealth presses in upon us 

83 



84 LOOK UP 

from every side and affects our living and our 
well being. It influences the laws which govern 
us; it has corrupted courts and legislatures 
for the benefit of the few and created oppres- 
sions which are forcing a social revolt. 

And so, one time, it came to pass that there 
was to be a "Blicklast of American MilHon- 
aires." This was because there were many 
earnest folk who beheved that wealth is not 
its own certificate of character; that millions 
without morals are apt to be worthless money. 

It was the declaration of the clergjTuen who 
rose to protest against "tainted money." In 
the keeping of this list, as fast as financiers 
were shown, by regular legal proceedings, to 
have made their millions by oppressive and il- i 

legal methods, the church would refuse to i 

solicit gifts from them or accept money for 
charitv at their hands. ^ 

Money, bounteously poured out, cannot 
sanctify the wrongful methods by which it has 
been produced, nor cleanse the hands of those 
who have used unclean methods. The black- 
list of milhonaires! 

It was a long coming, but the sentiment 
shaping it, which was begun when the ancient 



GOLDEN MIGHT 85 

moralist, with far-seeing vision, cried out 
against worship of the Golden Calf, has never 
ceased growing. It shaped itself to the various 
forms of social life. It found expression in the 
civilizations that have passed like chimeras, 
and now, in the marvelous growth of the twen- 
tieth century it has sounded a clear, far reach- 
ing note that men hear and, hearing, behold 
the problem with undazzled eyes — seeing what 
is fair, and what is ugly in the Golden Thing. 

The race has been rebelling against tyrannies 
since the first head-man abused his power, at 
a time when power lay in muscle and those 
who wielded club of stone came to grips 
in bloody death struggles. The tyranny of 
wealth came later, with a power greater and 
more complex, as civilization had become com- 
plex. 

The protest has persisted under the most 
unfavorable conditions. Sometimes smothered 
until its cries were tortured into a groan, it 
still survived. Over-ridden, trampled by steel- 
shod oppression and injustibe of power, it 
stiU found insistent expression. And always 
have there been spirits bold enough to raise 



86 LOOK UP 

their voices in declaring that might, panoplied 
though in gold, does not make right. 

It is this to be said, however: ''Tainted 
money" may be purified by high purpose, a 
view that is held by many who have followed 
the current discussion. JSTevertheless, money 
cannot buy a place in heaven. Neither can it 
purchase a clear conscience. No man who be- 
comes a free-handed giver with either of these 
purposes in mind is ever wholly deceived. 



i^ ;-^Cft-^W'% S ' 



TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING 

The saddest condition of a human existence 
is to possess "too much of a good thing;" for, 
whereas want and unsatisfied desire have a 
burden of pain, satiety is, by far, a deeper af- 
fliction. The man and woman who have 
squeezed the orange of life dry, and even eaten 
the pulp, often find little in life further to at- 
tach them to it. 

Satiety shows the way to suicide; and, while 
one person takes his life, thousands, thankful 
for even the smallest part of good that falls 
to them, give thanks that they have the en- 
estimable privilege of living. And so it goes 
through all the levels of our existence. What 
one prizes most highly, the other rejects. 

The sweet-toothed girl, who, looking upon a 
confectionery as the early expression of para- 
dise, at last got a position at a candy counter 
and ate so much sweets on the first day that 
she was sickened. After that, sweets became 
her aversion and she sought other employment. 

87 



88 LOOK UP 

Sometimes satiety does not work as rapidly 
but, because it is slower, is none the less ef- 
fective. Take love for instance! 

A big-brained American woman weaving, 
with the gold of her verses, Gautier's wonder- 
ful story "Clarimonde," has the beautiful vam- 
pire proclaim that she is "satiety itself." Un- 
disciplined love dreams of an unlimited feast! 

There is only one passion that knows no 
satiety. That is avarice, which can never be- 
come glutted because it is a bottomless pit! 

If love were like avarice the world would 
be a riot of madness. Because it is not, is a 
cause for fervent congratulation; for no in- 
considerable part of the planet is mad already. 

A man who loved the odor of flowers and 
adulation, so the ancient story goes, was so 
showered with fragrant blooms that he was 
buried beneath them and suffocated by their 
breath. And so kisses, which bear the same re- 
lation to love, may kill the very thing that call- 
ed them into being. 

Kisses are the pink roses of affection, which, 
breathed upon by Love, turn to blazing crim- 
son. Then came the thorns. A comely ISTew 
York wife* who, as a college-bred girl, married 



TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING 89 

a romantic Latin some time ago appealed to 
law for refuge from his endearments. 

She averred that, unchecked, he would have 
kissed her 86,400 times a day. That is a kiss 
for every second of the time, so that this couple 
might, in fact become a human clock, with the 
time marked by the most romantic method ever 
devised. 

To "kiss the hours away" may sound attrac- 
tive in a song ; but the reality is altogether an- 
other thing, minus poetry or music, if this wife 
was to be believed. "I sacrificed everything 
for this man," said she — "friends, family, pro- 
fession and art — for I loved him so. But since 
that time my life has been a hell. My husband 
will run up from his shop during business hours 
to kiss me. He kisses me in the morning, 
through the day and through the night. He 
won't let me sleep. He wants to be kissing me 
every second." 

This is the expression of a material age ; and 
it is just as well that no poet is at hand to sing 
the joy and the pain of this story. There are 
some joys that kill, and some griefs too deep 
for utterance. Meanwhile, let us prefer to 
chng to the fancy that love moves all things ; 



90 LOOK UP 

that, if the whole universe is an amatory har- 
mony, the stars are kisses which mark Love's 
pathway through the infinite. 



WHEN MOTHER BROIDERS 

This an an age in which woman is exper- 
iencing a great intellectual awakening. Some 
of the expressions of this fact are amazing in 
their sure perception of the truths of life; of 
the forces that surround and operate upon us 
and the sacred obligations of existence. 

Some of these women, free from the rever- 
sionary influence of centuries, with balance un- 
disturbed by sex aptitudes, have come to a 
calm, broad outlook on perplexing social pro- 
blems. There are others who have not the same 
sure position and to whose view arise distor- 
tions, grotesque, impossible and often laugh- 
able. 

Still these results mean something. They 
indicate that woman is thinking; that she is 
struggling for Hght and a clearer, surer view. 
It has been a long, long journey from the first 
primitive boat to the palatial ocean flyer; but 
through all the stages, of slow, painful devel- 

91 



92 LOOK UP 

opment, the thought, seekiiig ultimate perfec- 
tion, was working. 

A\^hen we adventure into the reahn of 
thought, we are apt to make mistakes in the 
heginning. Success is pretty sure to be last- 
ing that has been achieved over a long way of 
error. Errors are inflexible teachers, whose 
lessons we are not prone to forget. Evil is the 
very shadow of good. And yet some earnest 
souls there be who are prone to mistake the 
substance for the shadow. A well intentioned 
member of the Woman's Clnistian Temper- 
ance Union it was who sounded an impressive 
warning against the baleful evils of embroi- 
dery. 

Awesome tilings lurk 'vvdthin the innocent, 
placid, and artistic pastime, according to tliis 
good dame — dangers, not only to the worker 
but to the innocent generation that follows. 
Here is the substance of the pronouncement: 

''The sons of a mother who wears out her 
nerves on embroidery are as certain to go to 
liquor as to school. The girls either take to 
liquor or hysteria." 

There has been a lack of competent testi- 
mony that embroidery wears out the nerves 



WHEK MOTHER BROIDERS 93 

and is so deep seated in its injuries that they 
may be passed from generation to generation. 
It is probably a new discover}^, for the lady 
urged that the professors of psychology in col- 
leges be asked to teach "this scientific fact." 

Our ancestors, with more or less artistic 
taste, should this be true, have been going 
along for centuries shaping a curse with every 
movement of the needle; ^xing with each pris- 
oned thread, a grim penalty, to be passed on to 
the unborn! Better far to believe that the good 
lady was wrong, though her intent was quite 
laudable! As art is the expression of the as- 
piration and the sense of beauty of the race, so 
are its domestic handmaidens, weaving, paint- 
ing and embroidery, the things which fill with 
an active content the surplus time of the 
woman who feels the need of beauty as a part 
of life, and takes this mode of expression to 
show the love of it and to embody some of the 
fair fancies which people her mind. 

Embroidery, like painting, like music or 
weaving, can also be a spiritual expression — ■■ 
a means by which ideals may be given concrete 
form. A heart that is full of happiness often 
overflows in song. Sometimes it finds other 



94 LOOK UP 

Tents in things that the hand can do. A Troman 
may embroider the lark song of her soul. She 
may also embroider its swan song. But we 
are unwilling to believe that her floss-filled 
needle could ever embroider a line of 
drunkards. 



PRACTISING THE EMOTIONS 

The tutored, emotional woman was one of 
the striking figures that innovating Chicago 
put forward some years ago. She was the re- 
sult of "psycho-physical culture" and could 
be relied on to sound any note of human feel- 
ing, or to suppress it. Theoretically, she should 
have had power of expression to surpass Bern- 
hardt or Duse — not in magnificent electric 
bursts of feeling, but in the easy, natural and 
convincing dehneation that comes with actual 
Hfe. 

"Every woman should practise the entire 
gamut of emotions," said the exponent of the 
new creed. "She should know them and master 
them. An emotional woman is magnetic; an 
implusive one electric." 

At the same period, in another part of the 
country, another woman was prey to conflict- 
ing emotions. The law asked her life for the 
killing of a man, whom she said she loved. 
Figuratively, she had crowded all of life into 

95 



96 LOOK UP 

an hour and so, sounded the entire gamut. She 
drank deep of pleasure, beholding in its irides- 
cent sparkle new delights, new gratifications. 
She was blind to the fact that, in its depths, like 
the storm-harv^est, which marks the floor of the 
seas, there lay the cold, w^hite bones of dead 
men and the wreck of fair lives. Later she 
knew. The drink was bitter upon her hps and 
she sat in the shadow of death. 

In her life the prisoned woman had gone 
through all the emotions. And the most ex- 
quisite of all was fear — that overwhelming, in- 
born shrinking from an idea which unnerves 
the strong, but oftentimes makes strong the 
weak. Xo matter how dull her moral sense 
might have been, no matter how keen minds 
might have observed and deemed her deficient 
in this or in that, it must have been that the 
emotions that possessed her brought no pride 
in their manifestation. It was no mere theoretic 
exercise, but a tragic reality. 

The best schooling in emotions is that wliich 
experience gives ; and, the lesson once learned, 
is not readily forgotten. Woman's whole rule 
is to be on the defensive, and she instinctively 
and consciously controls her emotions. Each 



PRACTISING THE EMOTIONS 97 

one of the children of God is strung Kke a harp, 
so that every note of feeling can be sounded. 
All that is good and bad can be expressed at 
the touch of the proper chords. 

What divine music is possible! What ter- 
rifying discords, what melting harmonies! 

And yet, wherein is the profit unless the call- 
ing of one be to portray these emotions, to 
practice them as one turns to the running of a 
musical scale? Should one simulate grief be- 
cause there is a morbid pleasure in tears? 
Or anguish because it is the reverse of Joy? 
Should a woman "practice emotion," as she 
does some empty social accompKshment ? 

No! The Chicago woman's advice, it would 
appear, was the doctrine of decadence. The 
heart is too precious a gift to be made the ob- 
ject of a fad. And, in the gamut there are feel- 
ings so sacred that any irreverent appeal would 
be nothing short of personal profanation. 



THE TITANIC THIEF 

It seems incredible that one man in a posi- 
tion of trust should be able to steal $1,500,000; 
that this wealth should not have been more 
rigorously safeguarded. That the passion for, 
speculation should sweep a man away from all 
scruple so that lie risked ruin and disaster in 
the click of the ticker is a story that has been 
written in blood and tears, for many a sad year. 
Peculation has grown in proportion to the in- 
crease in material prosperity; but the degree 
of punishment to fit the crime, has not. The 
penalty that fell to the pygmy convicted of 
stealing $100 is the same that faces the large 
financial figure who to-day takes a million and 
a half. 

We are living in an age of giants. They 
have been in the process of making since, 
confident in the strength of youth and ^^ith an 
inspirational sight into the future, the nation 
threw off the yoke of England. For the rear- 
ing of these Titans the earth has yielded its 

98 



THE TITANIC THIEF 99 

vast treasures of metal and grain, while the 
thought of generations, a wonderful dynamic 
power, added its potency to the sweep of the 
natural forces. 

The country has grown bigger and bigger, 
so now it stands with a foot in either ocean and 
its form towers so high that the eyes of the en- 
tire world find in it an object of admiration, 
emulation, enw and distrust. 

A country of giant thought and achieve- 
ment, the same massive structure is in its 
virtues and its evils; its profits and losses; its 
hopes and fears. In no other place than a 
land of giants could such vast individual for- 
tunes be accumulated. In no other land, save 
one measured by the broadest scale of possi- 
bilities, could there be developed a trust mon- 
ster which, combining v/ith others of the same 
family, develops a combined power stronger 
than the government itself. The best thought 
of the land has been directed to the problem, 
realizing that in it lies that which, to the far- 
seeing eye, arouses the gravest apprehensions. 

The great industrial and commercial enter- 
prises are the work of giants. So, too, is the 
charity, which, at one magnificent movement of 



100 LOOK UP 

the hand gives $10,000,000 to a single cause. 
But, side by side with gigantic charity, skulks 
gigantic theft. The one and a half million 
dollar thief is a malevolent colossus. He is 
a distinct result of these times, and, by this one 
act caused more misery, anguish and dire mis- 
fortune than the unpretentious cut-throat who 
cheaply takes human life. 

The one and a half millon dollar thief, 
it seems, held in him a trust in all the evil, black 
passions that possess a man who loves money 
and power, and to whom the only guage of all 
things is the golden dollar-mark. Sacred trust 
betrayed, friends preyed upon and deeived — 
all these weigh nothing in the scale of "finan- 
cial expediency." 

Conscience, ethics and those intangible 
things of which serious minded folk talk, mean 
nothing to the materialism of the Giant Thief. 
His conscience is a process which* operates 
against the other fellow; and his ethics to rob 
the greatest number for the greatest benefit 
to himself. 

A Trust is a Giant Thief. And truly has 
it been said that a Trust has no heart, however 
the individuals may be constituted who com- 



THE TITANIC THIEF 101 

pose it. What a calamity it is, therefore, vv hen 
the remorseless Trust spirit enters the bosom 
of an individual ! Then it is that either the one 
and a half million dollar thief is made or 
the little miscreant, who first murders and then 
robs his victims. 



THINKING YOUNG 

One of the most beneficent blessings of 
second youth is that it never departs. When 
the last hour comes, the gray of Death is dis- 
solved, like mist before the sun, by the radi- 
ance of a heart warm with humanities and mel- 
lowed by mature years. 

Youth in old age is an inspiration, a pro- 
mise, a symbol to those who struggle along, 
spiritless and disheartened, that the last miles 
of hfe's journey need not be a way of bitter- 
ness, regret and tears. 

In the span of his seventies, Chauncey Mit- 
chell Depew, now eighty-five, was in the very 
heyday of his birthdays. He had the heart and 
inclinations of a youth and the wisdom of a 
sage. 

Here, indeed, is an ideal condition of man, 
which, should it become general, will send 
us along the way of progress at a rate that 
would stagger comprehension. This is an age 
of hale active old men — despite any ridiculous 

102 



THINKING YOUNG 103 

suggestion of a "chloroform limit" — and their 
condition is undeniably the result of a life full 
of the activities of thought and body. An 
active life is its own reward, bringing abun- 
dant compensations and deep-reaching joys, 
which have no part in the existence of the idle 
or the unproductive. 

Our Chauncey, though some folks are apt 
to question his inevitable optimism, has ever 
looked on work with a sense of intimate kin- 
ship — as something to which he would be in- 
debted more and more as the years grew on. 
He has given much to it and it has given him 
much in return — ^things which sweeten the life 
of the individual and are not to be counted in 
dollars. 

Each man should fulfill some useful fimc- 
tion in the great human family. He may not 
be able to direct a vast public utility like a 
railroad; he may not be able to till the fields 
or to tend the flocks that we might live; nor 
weave that we might wear; but he who does 
the meanest of duties is dignified by labor no 
less than the others. That he does it to insure 
his own livelihood in no wise detracts from the 
merit of it. We all share in the benefit. 



104. LOOK UP 

So it is that whatever your hands find to do, 
do it to the utmost of your ability. The feeling 
that you have so contrived will give you a calm, 
pervading pleasure. 

All of life is work; and the man of activi- 
ties lives to the fulness of his being. 

More people die of inaction than are claimed 
by plague. 

Old age is merely a mental condition, a 
delusion, which the vast majority of the race 
still persist in ; but great broad minds superbly 
reject it and keep joyously at the front in the 
onward march. 



GLORY OF WOMAN'S WORK 

The material development of America is an 
Aladdin story in which adventurous brains, 
skillful hands and mechanical ingenuity have 
furnished the magic. The Lamp is still burn- 
ing that all the world may see. Nor does 
the greatest countries repose alone in these 
things. Back of the hands, which coarsen with 
the toil of the field; which, in the mill, with 
the regularity of machinery, work like pallid 
shuttles; which may direct a great railroad 
system or cunningly shape the most terrible 
engine of war — back of these is the character of 
man, his moral stature — ^the real thing that de- 
termines the worth of a people. 

Contemplating this at once brings for- 
ward the element of home influence and the 
mother of the race. The rest of the great 
family has gone onward with amazing strides ; 
but, though she knows the joys of new free- 
dom, Woman is still retarded by influences 
that come to us from a far, savage time, when 

105 



i06 LOOK UP 

she was a slave, and not only carried the "bur- 
den of humanity" but actual loads, wliich bent 
the shoulders and taxed head, heart and mus- 
cle. Similar conditions may obtain to-day, but 
they are as much a^part of this electric age as 
would be the home of the crude cave dwellers 
in place of the perfectly appointed modern 
apartment house. 

Woman has borne patiently her ills while she 
moved slowly forward. Sometimes a voice has 
been raised bitterly in rebellion, shrilling 
sharply as some injustice galled, so as to cause 
a thrill of torture. Often it has been hysterical 
and irrational; but every now and then there 
has sounded a voice of the inspired one, ^dbrant 
vrith conviction and toned by reason and that 
truth, which the eyes of the seer beholds behind 
the veil of ordinary things. 

Mary A. Livermore, died in the fullness of 
of 84 years ; she was one of these. A champion 
of her sex, she was large of heart and her sym- 
pathies reached out to all humanity. It has 
been truly said that one of her deepest and most 
earnest doctrines was that the greatness of this 
country depended, to the highest degree, on 



GLORY OF WOMAN'S WORK lOT 

the intelligence and independence of its 
women. 

The good we do lives after us. And it is also 
true that it may go before. Frequently, from 
the heart of some strong personality there 
springs a conviction so vital, so full of the vigor 
of truth and justice, that, with flashing, v/ing- 
ed feet, it speeds into the future with its mes- 
sage to the unborn. So it v>^as that the bless- 
ings of this woman's work did ever befall her, 
beckoning her on, filling her undimmed vision 
with a vista so broad, so far-stretching and 
abundantly peopled that only the soul, with its 
subtle sympathies, could realize the full mean- 
ing of it. 

An enlightened, free vvomanhood and a na- 
tion with the daring for eagle flight, and then 
the eagle's eye to brave the sun ! A life such as 
was this one woman's, makes for that ideal — a 
life whose energies glowed with steady white 
radiance; whose reward is in the measure of 
things accomplished and in the unshaken be- 
lief that the seeds, sowed by inspired words, 
will bring increasingly abundant harvest as 
Time strings the opalescent years on his eter- 
nal rosary, 



SOPHISTRY OF EGOTISM 

Pride goeth before a fall, but egotism digs 
the pit. The world is full of pretentious medi- 
ocrity, which so vaunts itself that many, w^ho 
can not see below the surface of the shov/, are 
apt to deem it worthy or even exalted. The 
false and the vicious, knowing how repellantly 
they stand in the naked verity, take on the 
drapery of the rainbow and modulate their 
voices to gentle harmony. 

The hiss of a snake can be set to music. 
The voice of sophistry may sound in polished 
periods or melodious measure. There is a dead- 
ly poison in the sting of each. 

Sometimes a moral delinquent raises his en- 
venomed voice against the established order 
and frantically avers that everj^thing is out 
of gear ; that the world was started y, rong and 
the race has been laboring up the weary, misty 
steep of j^ears weighed ^vith horrible errors. 

And the little, distorted brain, seeing all 
creation through its oy\ti pitiable egotism, at 

108 



SOPHISTRY OF EGOTISM 109 

once recommends a remedy that will produce a 
race of beings which, compared to those of to- 
day, will nearly approximate gods. Those who 
would defy the most vital laws and audaciously 
flout recognized custom are hailed as courage- 
ous souls that dare — giants, that rise magnif- 
icently above the dull common place of ordi- 
nary existence. 

So, too, maybe the claim of the thief, w^ho, 
disdaining the laws of society, breaks in and 
robs by night; the desperado who, attacliing 
small value to human life, kills for the mere 
excitement of it; the corrupter or the wrecker 
of homes, often beyond the written laws, but 
nevertheless an outlaw; the man who, also 
keeping free from the law, makes fortune from 
the corruption of politics and the wrecking of 
civic virtue. 



HOW ARE YOU LIVING? 

One of the wise men of the world has said 
that we should study how to live, and not how 
to die. Death will take care of itself. The 
measure of a man's life, the good he has done ; 
the things he has hoped for and achieved; the 
unhallowed temptations, which have come to 
iiim and been resisted, and those which have 
at times overcome him — all of these make for 
the setting of that brief moment before the 
light is quenched in darkness. 

The fear of death has been one of the most 
powerful factors governing the souls of men; 
and, yet it would seem, despite the insistent 
impress of this idea, which has come down to 
us through ages, that a surprising number of 
persons regard death lightly, unconsciously, 
perhaps, aissimilating the idea of that mse 
ancient who declared that of all things to which 
the human race was subject death was least to 
be feared, for "When we are, death is not. 
When death is, we are not.'* 

110 



HOW ARE YOU LIVING? Ill 

In this laconism Ues infinite truth and 
philosophy. Thousands upon thousands of 
books have been written, concerning the great 
mystery, without bringing home the truth 
more directly. The gigantic slaughter of war 
brings out, with crimson intensity, the fact that 
vast numbers of men may go willingly to death 
without a quaver, eager to kill one another 
Mdth the last convulsive twitch of their stiffen- 
ing hands. 

In this the Christian, who has in his mind 
the divine tragedy of Calvary, and the Orien- 
tal, who sees only the watchful spirits of his 
ancestors, do not differ. Each gives life with 
a freedom that shames the prodigal, who scat- 
ters his gold in the street. 

It tests a man's nerves to walk to certain 
death in the face of a killing machine which 
works with infernal precision. Yet, ia a city 
crov/ded with humans, like New York, thou- 
sands are going just as surely to death through 
the lack of proper precaution. Little ailments 
noted in time and treated tend to prolong life, 
but we are most prone to disregard the im- 
portance of these little things. 

*'A stitch in time saves nine." And, as our 



112 LOOK UP 

lives are mere fabric, torn and rent by con- 
flicting passions and beset by unceasing de- 
lay, it is these little stitches that count most. 
If a single one saved nine, a man, in his Hfe- 
time, may so save that he actually doubles the 
days of his existence. 

The war has furnished many lessons. In 
the strategy that has to do with the slaughter 
of human beings, the dreams of conquest and 
the hope of prevention, new standards will be 
established. But the most salient lesson, em- 
phasized in every feature of the great struggle, 
was that of preparedness. 

Trifles often are the golden grains, which, 
when assembled at one point, make for price- 
less efficiency and strength. 

The man who is prepared to die is the man 
who has lived well; who approaches the brink 
of the abyss without a fear, seeing before him 
in the great void of darkness the beaconing 
light of his own kindly deeds. So he goes to 
the end serenely, with no horrible phantoms at 
his side jeering him or lashing him with the 
cruel stings of conscience. 

We all cannot have that wonderful intoxi- 
cation of war which makes men laugh on the 



HOW ARE YOU LIVING? 118 

verge of Hell but we may have the calm up- 
lift and the serene spirit of deeds well done. 
So, while we look back on the bloody pano- 
rama of death, which has caused the world to 
shudder, let us give a thought to how we are 
living. 



A BIG BUILDING LESSON 

Some one has called the subway system of 
New York one of the world's new seven won- 
ders. Dwellers in the big city regard it most 
as a convenience of discomfort and its daily 
familiarity makes no appeal to the imagination. 
And, yet, it is one of the world's most instruc- 
tive human shows — New York's interior whir- 
ring and flashing with activities and teeming 
with life — it's a gigantic study for generations 
to come. 

Though reassured by mechanical and struc- 
tui-al perfection, the building of tunnels 
through a city like New York is an act of 
daring. The man skilled in such projects 
must bring to the task both imagination and 
cool, unwavering judgment. No man who 
lacked self-reliance and determination ever sue- 
fully essayed an undertaking in wliich great 
natural obstacles were to be overcome. The 
undertaking is a measure of the man. 

Not all of us can be tunnel-builders or 

114 



A BIG BUILDING LESSON 115 

stanch-hearted men who dare to erect a modern 
tower of Babel on spiles; but most of us may- 
cultivate self-reliance. It is the moral sinews 
that build the individual, so that the arm of 
his purpose is strong and he stands solidly 
upon his feet and moves with the ease, grace 
and assurance of an athelete. And, in veriest 
fact, he is an athlete ready to undertake the 
most exacting trial in which reward is at the 
end. lie moves with vigorous certainty and his 
feet seldom encounter grievous obstacles. 

This matter of feet is most important. They 
are made to stand on, to walk with, it is true, 
but they do not carry all men through the 
world. Some make their way on their stom- 
achs ; others refuse to make effort at any sort 
of locomotion and finally die of inaction. 

The world belongs to the self-reliant, the 
just and the strong. They alone have the cour- 
age to make it their own. The ambitionless 
weak, the irresolute and the supinely dependent 
have no place in the scheme. 

No man can become morally big and strong 
who hangs his reliance upon others for what 
should be the result of his own God-given 
effort. A young man who constantly falls back 



116 LOOK UP 

upon the bounty of home has no spur to ad- 
venture out into the bleak unpromising places 
to make his way. The love of the easy fire- 
side, the little creature comforts and the ready 
indulgence have been strong enough to shut 
out legions from careers worth while. 

From the pathfinder to the subway builder 
is a long swing of the pendulum of progress. 
And it shows how self-reliance, strong confi- 
dent and hopeful, arises to meet every new 
problem of civilization. So stand squarely on 
your feet ; cultivate confidence in yourself and 
you will grow in strength. You may not build 
a gigantic subway system but you will go a 
gi'eat way toward the building of yourself. 



THE MAGIC CRYSTAL OF PEACE 

Into the high fever of the war spirit that 
possessed the man at home as he read of the 
prodigies of arms performed on distant plains 
and seas, the spirit of Peace comes with its 
cool, calm presence, holding in one hand the 
olive branch, and, in the other, a crystal sphere 
wherein are shadowed the dreams of the future 
and the measure of their fulfillment. 

More yet than a mere hope, it is an inspired 
behef that, some time in our upward journey, 
mind will so develop that the animal part of 
man, which impels him to spring at a fellow 
being and tear and rend and kill, will fall away 
like a foul ulcer, and, in the world-wide spirit 
of perfect humanity, war will be impossible — 
a thing of the savage past, the recalled horrors 
of which will only serve to emphasize the im- 
provement of the race. 

No matter how "humanely" it may be con- 
ducted, war is a barbarous proceeding which 
modem science has stripped of nearly all of 

117 



118 LOOK UP 

its picturesque and romantic trappings. Now 
it is a grim, matter-of-fact killing on a gigantic 
scale, in which the marvels of new sciences are 
brought to bear. Long ago when they slew 
man by hand, and foes always came to grips in 
the red fury of the onslaught, the blows that 
sounded on helm, shield and buckler made a 
music which poets have shaped into stirring 
verses. But, now, that men are fed to machines 
and die without striking a blow, it is appalling- 
ly different. 

There is a diabolic ingenuity in the modern 
method of man-killing, when the turning of a 
crank may send a thousand humans out into 
the darkness; when the pressure of a button 
may cause the rending and destruction of the 
most powerful and most complex of warlike 
mechanisms, the field of action of which covers 
the entire world. 

Fourteen years ago, while the temple of 
Peace was being projected at the Hague, a 
structure whose white beauty would typify the 
dignity and purity of the idea, the whole world 
thrilled ^^dth the war spirit and nations began 
looking to greater armament. President 



THE MAGIC CRYSTAL 119 

Roosevelt at that time in his Brooklyn speech 
said: 

"The surest way to invite disaster is to be 
unarmed. We should not be aggressive unless 
aggressiveness is in defence of our self-respect 
as a nation and for the good of mankind. To 
be aggressive and not to be armed invites dis- 
aster and the contempt of all." 

Power, like powder, is to be guarded from 
flame. What flame is more destructure to men 
and nations than selflsh ambition? Germany 
has furnished the answer to us of to-day. 

Some minds, at times may see aught of the 
futility of hfe and again realize what a puny 
dust heap the world is after all. Others foresee 
a god-Kke future for man, who, with all his 
tremendous intellectual and material advance- 
ment, has not yet freed himself from the in- 
stincts of the savage. 

And yet, despite the poet of nations, there 
are some unmoved observers who still reluc- 
tantty believe that the methods of wholesale 
slaughter and destruction will continue until 
the world is spiritualized in an era of light or 
until a time, as predicted hj Nikola Tesla, 
when war will be fought out wholly by auto- 



120 LOOK UP 

matons and no blood be shed — a contest of 
wonderful machines which will carry in their 
complex hearts all the warlike, intellectual, 
strategical and mechanical genius of a nation. 
Then, indeed, will the time of universal peace 
be near, for if any question may be left to the 
arbitration of mere machines it could be ad- 
justed fully as well by the brains that created 
the automatons. 

Yet all these things are but dreams that lurk 
in the depths of the magic crystal or whisper 
to the soul the poetry of the new golden age. 



THE PASSING OF THE BIRDS 

In the process of civilization, with its con- 
stantly changing conditions, many things once 
prized are cast aside and forgotten, or tram- 
pled upon and destroyed. The same with men ; 
the same with ideas and conventions. Like- 
wise, with things with which we come in con- 
tact and which have no part in the newest ad- 
justment. 

The red man has almost been annihilated 
by civilization; the buffalo, which roamed the 
Western prairies in thousands, is now w^ell nigh 
extinct. And, not so long ago, it seemed that 
the wild birds, those joyous people of the air 
that give to nature a charm which has stirred 
the heart of many a poet, were hkely soon to 
be but memories of the past — shadow shapes 
that wing their way through by-gone days like 
precious dream fancies. ..* 

As human life becomes denser and spreads 
itself over the Continent, the birds flee before 
it, if they are not destroyed. As the great 

121 



122 LOOK UP 

centres of population blight and wither many 
tender souls, so do they shape the fate of the 
feathered folk. This is one of the most pitiful 
tragedies of nature, and many persons who 
sense, with a finer appreciation, the wonders 
and beauties of outdoor life are filled with 
sorrow. 

When the protective movement was under 
way, some years ago, a Massachusetts ofiicial 
compiled a census of wild birds, Vv^hich treated 
of a great variety of purely "game" and those 
musical throated vagrants that follow the sun 
as it wheels on it's goldern course through the 
seasons. The robin and the tanager, bringing 
life, movement and color to the city parks, 
when the trees are in their greening and the 
sides are soft aglow, have thousands of friends 
v/ho love them and whose hearts grow lighter 
when they come from the Southland with their 
joyous messages. 

To feel that in time they must vanish brings 
a sense of a great calamity. 

As we look upon our cities and how the 
growth is being extended by means of the elee- 
tric roads and the improvement of waste lands, 
we may see the doom of bird life written. The 



PASSING OF THE BIRDS 123 

Massachusetts authority, in assigning the 
causes for destruction, mentioned these: — 
Sportmen or so called sportsmen; the cutting 
of timber and shrubbery ; market hunters ; egg 
collectors; milliners' hunters; the draining of 
marshes and meadows, gun clubs in hunting 
contests; the erection of telegraph and tele- 
phone poles; the building of electric trolleys; 
railroads and automobiles. 

CiviKzation demands its price; and, to the 
modern man imbued with commercial activities 
and material instincts, the question of birds is 
as remote as a consi(Jeration of something the 
existence of which has ceased to be. 

The song birds are nature's happy troubu- 
dours. Those troubadours, who sang in the 
time of love and romance, are nh more. Even 
now, the less romantic street singer is seldom to 
be heard. Yet love and romance are not dead. 
They are so inwoven with our lives that they 
will remain even after the marvelous fabric of 
this civilization has been swept away and the 
last man and woman on earth stand side by 
side. It is a poetic wish that, at that time, the 
song of the birds may be attuned to the one 
great feeling that fills their breasts. 



LOVE AND LAUGHTER 

Theodore Roosevelt, said that, in gauging 
the character of a man, the capacity for honest, 
unaffected laughter is an element that should 
not be overlooked. The historian of the future 
who, in T^Titing of our most strenuous Presi- 
dent, applies this test to him, will find that he 
was an admirable example of his own rule. 

A really big man has a really big laugh. 
JMany little men, like^\dse, have big laughs ; ones 
just as small are liable to have big heads. But 
a man, who is intensely lumian and is gifted 
with intellectual bulk, is apt to show as much 
character in his laughter as he does in his talk, 
his walk and gesture. So were good Dr. John- 
son; that versatile giant Balzac; our graceful 
and witty Washington Irving, and the JMaster 
of all men who have thought and written, 

Ordinarily laughter is such a natural and 
spontaneous action that it causes no wonder- 
ment; yet, indeed, it is a powerful thing. 
Modern science has turned to it, so that we 

124 



LOVE AND LAUGHTER 125 

may know, with more or less certitude, the 
philosophy of mirth. We learn now that sel- 
dom do two persons laugh the same, and that 
laughter itself is an indication of character; 
that, as an expression of good spirit, it is much 
the same, from the primitive New Zealander to 
cultivated Caucasian. Sir Arthur Mitchell, 
who had given much study to the subject, thus 
announced the sum of his finding : 

That laughter is a state of mental disorder, 
which is evidenced by the irrational and pur- 
poseless phenomena attending it, and the ab- 
sence, during their continuance, of all thought ; 
that these short states of mental disorder, 
which may be very frequent, do not hurt us, 
but, on the contrary, do us good ; that laughter 
is not even usually the expression of unalloyed 
pleasure or joy; that, on the contrary, it often 
expresses states of mind which are mean, 
contemptible and cruel, the moral faculty be- 
ing then in abeyance, and that laughter so aris- 
ing is only pardonable on the view that it is a 
state of mental disorder. 

It will be seen, therefore, that laughter is as 
broad as human nature ; yet despite the sinister 
dde, a laughing face is one of the cheeriest 



126 LOOK UP 

tilings in life. One sees so few of them in New 
York! Cities grind out the humanities and so 
attentuate and starve the soul that very often 
laughter is the expression of tragedy. 

There are two magic gifts with which the 
Creator has endowed us more marvelous than 
any which have figured in the fairy fabrics of 
ehldhood; more powerful than any of the 
forces that modern science has grasped from 
the infinite ; more precious, by far, than all the 
fabled vrealth of Ind — tv/o gifts which so 
transfigure and exalt existence that, life with- 
out them would be a thing that lacked both 
soul sunshine. These gifts are Love and 
Laughter. From the germ-psalm to planet, 
clothed in human activities, Love is the vital 
note. The universe, mth myriad worlds, held 
in the hollow of the Creator's hand, draws 
from Love the power that animates it and 
makes its flashing glories. 

When the earth was still in the darkness of 
the Beginning and man w^as not, an Angel held 
in its heart all of the joyousness that was to 
come to the human race. It struggled for ex- 
pression, like a torrent held in bondage. At 
last it found freedom, when the Angel 



LOVE AND LAUGHTER 12T 

laughed. Then the earth became bright and 
starred with visible light. The winds awoke, 
and, whispering, carried the echo of the sound 
which circled round and round the globe like a 
golden cincture. 

Some very wise men say the earth was bom 
amid travail and pain. If this be so, it was 
christened with laughter. That may be the 
reason why tears and laughter are so nearly 
twdn. 



THE FUTILITY OF GOLD 

Money may make no caste for the dead. In 
the democracy of the sod, prince and pau- 
per are aUke. The grave-worm knows no dis- 
tinction, and finely woven cerements and costly 
funerals are things without meaning — futile 
forms laid at the feet of the Unknowable. 
This much, however, is known — ^that the 
pale, lax hands can carry no mite of treasure 
on the long, gray journey of the dead. The 
Book is simple and direct in its admonition, 
concerning the storing of earthly treasures. 

A man whose religion has been the acquire- 
ment of wealth, to whom the dollar mark has 
been a sacred emblem, and who, at last, has 
figuratively gained the whole world, is liable 
to experience a change of heart as old age 
grows upon him. Things are very apt to take 
on a different perspective, and a craving grow 
in the soul for that which he does not possess. 

Conscience grows with the years, or it be- 
comes atrophied. Its growth is encouraged 

128 



THE FUTILITY OF GOLD 129 

when a man has time to sit down and look 
closely at himself. If he has been large in 
achievements and craft, he is likely to realize 
how little he is in his bigness. 

The soul that is not wholly dead demandsi 
something more than material things. He who 
amasses wealth, and lives for himself alone, is 
as a castawav on a treasure island, cut off from 
the world and the joys that come from the 
sympathetic intercourse of men. 

That the country has many such men is 
apparent because of the rising denunciation of 
the "greed of riches." Speaking of this class, 
Theodore Hoosevelt said: *'It is far more 
imi'ortant that they should conduct their busi- 
ness affairs decently than that they should 
spend the surplus of their fortunes in philan- 
thropy. Much has been given to those men, 
and we have a right to demand much of them 
in return. Every man of great wealth v/ho 
runs his business with cynical contempt for 
those prohibitions of the law, which, by hired 
cunning, he can escape or evade, is a menace to 
our community; and the community is not to 
be excused if it does not develop a spirit which 
actively frowns on and discountenances him." 



130 LOOK UP 

A great gift to Yale perhaps realized 
Colonel Roosevelt's idea of something given 
''in return." But it is doing good without 
lowering the ideals of the young men who are 
being benefitted by it. Money surely should 
be put to the use productive of the most good. 

Let the wealthy give to worthy objects. A 
step over the faint line between Mght and dark- 
ness, and money becomes dross. It is essential- 
ly a thing of life, and all of the forces held in 
it are human in their interest. Some time be- 
fore the war, a citizen of Hungary, had liis for- 
tune of $17,500 buried with him in his coffin. 
His relatives hearing of it, exhumed the body 
and divided the money among themselves. 
Such an occurrence is unlikely to happen here, 
for our wealthy men, who are experts in trans- 
portation and rebates, know full well the im- 
possibility of carrying specie on the *'long, 
long haul." 



THOROUGHNESS 

Thoroughness* is the fibre, flawlessly woven, 
which gives the highest value either to charac- 
ter or to attainment. Much that is merely 
superficial passes for actual quality, and there 
is little disposition to question, so long as fixed 
results are achieved. 

We are in a period of amazmg opulence, of 
stupendous greed, of impatience that thrusts 
aside moral standards the quicker to grasp the 
gain ; a period in which time is actually minted 
into gold, so that minutes are grudged, like 
sordid tokens which may be held in the hand 
and bartered. These forces are destructive of 
ideals; for, when one begins to measure the 
mental work of a man by a percentage table, 
the condition resolves itself, not so much into 
a question of what he knows, but as to his dex- 
terity in accomplishing rapid and gratifying 
results. 

In a time of shoddy, of specious imitation 
and criminal adulteration, thoroughness does 

131 



132 LOOK UP 

not receive the measure of respect that even 
justice woLild accord. Yet it is the stable ele- 
ment on which is based the strength of things 
that call into play the brains and hands of men. 

The false, the unworthy, must fall before 
the tests of time, while the things of thorough- 
ness take on a permanence like the imperish- 
ables that spring from the heart of Truth. The 
man, who has witliin his grasp a thorough 
knowledge of a science or an art, is a giant 
among liis fellows, providing he possesses an 
alert brain and a far-seeing percecption of 
possibility and result. 

The world will cleave to a plain man of 
thoroughness, despite the more impressive but 
less worthy figures that pass like ephemerals, 
for he is fixed and unshaken as a rock. Shp- 
shod method and the surface show of ex- 
pediency are short-lived, and those of you who 
go out to wrest from the world its favor and 
its rewards would do well to accept this as an 
unfailing truth. 



TREASURE OF A CHEERFUL 
HEART 

Riches cannot purcluise repose, tliongh that 
IS the promise they liold ont to those that have 
no great store. Repose is grown from the 
nature of the man, a harmony of personal 
force which gives to the character symmetry, 
poise and content. And of these the rarest is 
Content. 

It falls to most of us that we are moved by 
discontent and by little ambitions; and death 
comes and takes us, unsatisiied, on the long, 
gray faring. 

Happiness is not always foimd on the 
heights, amid tlie glow of rose and gold, thongli 
it may raise one from the clod to an infinite 
star flight. The laborer, earth-stained and 
sodden with sweat, wlio leaves the toil of the 
day with a cheerful heart, and who, in the hum- 
ble surroundings of his home feels at })eace 
with the rest of the world — that man is rich 

133 



134 LOOK UP 

in the possession of what men of millions might 
envy. 

The fairy tale tells of the prince who, satiat- 
ed by luxury and polite hypocrisies, went in 
search of happiness — and found it in a cabin 
in the forest. The materialism of the age gives 
us shot-swift automobiles and palatial express 
trains, instead of magic carpets; commercial 
craft, instead of the magic wand to turn dross 
into gold. 

Yet withal, are we in a fairy age when the 
things apart from man's acquiring are put 
aside, and the things within man or springing 
from him, are considered. So, it is true even 
to-day, that story of the prince and his quest 
— ^true because it was inspired by the wisdom 
of a great truth lying at the heart of human 
nature. Men may consecrate their lives to 
various material ends ; but, eventually all turn 
to the quest for happiness. He to whom it 
comes without an effort, is, indeed, abundantly 
blest. 

The discussion of wealth is widespread, and, 
in the present temper, there has been much un- 
reasonable condemnation of the wealthy and 
much, too, that has been just. Where the 



A CHEERFUL HEART 

acquirement of wealth by "modern methods" is 
touched upon, there naturally follows some ex- 
pression concerning lofty ideals. From which 
the uninitiated would receive the impression 
that they are far removed one from the other. 
Theodore Roosevelt in an address to school 
teachers said; 

"Moreover, where altogether too much 
prominence is given to the mere possession of 
wealth, the country is under heavy obligation 
to such a body as this, which substitutes for the 
ideal of accumulating money the infinitely 
loftier, non-materialistic ideal of devotion to 
work worth doing, simply for that v/ork's 
sake." 

That is a strong note. It rings true. Only 
through work is repose and content possible. 
A lapidly increasing part of the people are 
beginning to realize the dignity and the vital 
necessity of work in relation to the progress 
and uplift of society. Idleness is sterility. 
The next step is extinction. 

The man who works with hand and mind is 
the one who toils fruitfully, giving something 
worth while, be it large or small, to the sum- 
total of endeavor. A financier may feel a not 



136 LOOK UP 

unreasonable pride in the fact that liis shrewd- 
ness has netted him $2,000,000 in a single day, 
as Mr. Thomas Lawson once confessed; but 
the humble laborer, who has bent liis back and 
strained his muscles in the glare of the sun, 
can hold hinjself in a higher esteem that every 
cent of the day's wage was earned in the strict- 
est honesty and that he gave full value for the 
money. With such a feehng comes the con- 
tent of effort. 

Witness, also, a Long Island Railroad 
laborer earning $1.20 a day, who learned that 
he was heir to $3,825,000. From his meagre 
earnings he saved enough to purchase three 
small farms, two of which he rented. He lived 
in a cottage, the like of which must have figur- 
ed in the fairy tale. The possession of the vast 
fortune could bring to it no more wealth than 
it already held. "Anyway," said Thomas, "If 
I never get a cent of the millions, what of it? 
I don't need it. I have been happy, with no 
thought of wealth and I will remain contented 
if it never comes." 

Here, indeed, was the fairy tale realized I 



ENSHRINING THE "SQUARE 
DEAL" 

An honest man is the noblest work of man» 
Though many of his virtues may be God- 
given, it is by his own conscious effort that he 
is honest. If honesty were a thing into which 
we were born, like the body with its varied 
functions, it would not be a virtue, but some- 
thing forced upon- us, precluding any choice. 

It is a virtue because it can only be main- 
tained by fixed adherence to the highest stan- 
dards concerning the obligations of men one 
to the other, and jealously safeguarding them 
from the enervating influences which spring 
from covetousness and avarice. 

It is easy to be dishonest. The path of per- 
dition is a piimrose way. 

The honest man does not always enjoy se- 
renity. It must come at times that he 
is sorely tempted to give way slightly from the 
fixity of his position and argue the matter with 
himself. More often he is compelled to use 

137 



138 LOOK UE 

the very sinews of character in repelling as- 
sault. 

The man who is honest with himself must 
needs be honest with other men, and "square 
dealing," therefore, works for good both ways. 
The untutored, rough adventurer, who goes 
to wrest a living from the wilderness and 
makes his rule of conduct *'a square deal," has 
the very religion of humanity and much, too, 
that is divine. 

Theodore Koosevelt said a great many 
things worth remembering. He had a talent 
for phrase-making; and, whether expressing 
the convictions which shaped themselves with- 
in him or some declaration of mere policy, he 
was very likely to put some thought into 
words which would linger in the memory. 

His "square deal" declaration, because of 
its homely bluntness and the spirit of fair 
play it expressed, is likely to be remembered 
long after the more important deeds of the 
man are dimmed by forgetfulness. 

The "square deal" symbolizes the ideal 
American spirit of man's relation to man ; and, 
though volumes upon volumes on sociology 
have been written to impress this obligation. 



THE "SQUARE DEAL" 139 

still has it never been more tersely or vigor- 
ously expressed than in this phrase, so typ- 
ically Ameriran. 

Even if human memory should fail, which 
is unlikely, the expression is commemorated 
in gold, as it expresses the golden creed. St. 
Gaudens, one of the world's giants in art, 
fashioned the inaugural medal, as you may re- 
call, and on the solid gold one sent to the 
President was this legend: "Theodore Roose- 
velt, President of the United States, Acquum 
Cuiqiie.'^ 

The Latin lacks the frankness of the Roose- 
velt tongue, but it gives to the expression a 
classic dignity which, however, adds nothing 
to the strength of the original expression, "a 
square deal." 

The present is so full of dishonesty, trick- 
ery and is diseased by the gangrene of graft, 
that a "square deal" has a refreshing and in- 
spiring sound. It is like a voice from the 
homely past, when the gospel of each man was 
to "tote fair with the other;" when there were 
no vast accumulations of wealth to tempt men 
to fraud, deceit and shameful chicanery. 

The "square deal" is the expression from a 



140 LOOK UP 

time when most m^en were "square,'* counting 
this the great part of their hf e conduct. There 
was much in the good old days that has heen 
left behind, to be supplanted by the improved 
thing ; but plain honesty is of an absolute qual- 
ity, which neither age nor custom can add to, 
nor in any wise improve. That is the reason 
the "square deal" is minted into gold, and, a 
living thing, shrined in the temple of classic 
tongue — 

Acquum Cuiquel 



THE TREASURE-DEEPS OF 
SILENCE 

Speech is the soul's interpretation, the ex- 
pression of the things that shape themselves 
in the consciousness of man, and, thus, coming 
forth, are readily comprehended. So wonder- 
ful has been the development of man that the 
time will come, in the far future, when the 
soul is so grown that oral speech will be an 
obsolete thing of dim tradition; and those who 
live in that time will hold intercourse in 
thought, which has neither sound nor sjanbol, 
but which will manifest itself in depths of feel- 
ing and sympathy undreamed of in this mate- 
rial day. 

Nor is it a dispiriting prospect, this sur- 
rendering of speech and all of its lights and 
shades, its varying beauties and graceful fluc- 
tuant moods, its tender caresses ; its fires glow- 
ing from the heart, which sway the soul as the 
flame in the breath of the wind. 

What ecstasies are there in silence! What 

141 



142 LOOK HP 

measureless calms and exalted delights! The 
master-minds of the world, who have looked 
with inspired insight into the great secret of 
life, have been saving of words, most of them; 
thoughtful men, silent creatures who, sunk 
in contemplation, found silence teeming with 
eloquent things. 

Thought implies silence, and so, in time, 
Avhen thinking man will have reached a large 
measure of his limitless development, those 
voiceless days Mdll be full of that which mere 
weak speech could not comprehend. 

A talkative person is liable to be a shallow 
one, as well; for, as the good old saying goes, 
"The shallow stream brawls the loudest!'' 
This truth, born of observation in a homely, 
plain time, finds expression tin many other 
similar adages. If any striking example were 
needed to-day it might be found, perhaps, in 
an unusual development in a well known yacht 
club. It was all because of a "talkfest," or, 
as it was more popularly styled, "a hot air 
festival." 

Two members were pitted against each 
other, and it may be that, in the enthusiasm of 
the contest, they said many foolish things. 



SILENCE 143 

When the matter became the subject of public 
criticism, the conservative members, who knew 
the value of words and looked upon them with 
a certain reverence, were displeased at what 
they considered an undignified exhibition. As 
a result, one of the most conspicuous figures, 
the president of a great railroad, resigned, and 
it was said that other members of the same 
mould of thought believed that their business 
would suffer it they continued to remain in a 
club that descended to such frivohty. 

It may be contended, with justice, that a 
club is a social organization in which there 
should be certain relaxations which a man 
does not find in his business; and that, there- 
fore, it is hardly in the spirit of the thing to 
apply to it the same rigid measures as one 
would to mere commercial affairs. Whatever 
the merit of the discussion, the fact remained 
that man, while he has raised speech to great 
spiritual and poetic heights, has also sunk it to 
unspeakable depths, and applied it to un- 
worthy uses, wasting it with a prodigality that 
seems pitifully ignorant of its wonderful 
value. 

Strange is it, indeed, that of all the animals 



144 LOOK UP 

which inhabit the earth, the one that is en- 
dowed with the divine gift of speech is the 
only one, which, through this very gift, makes 
a fool of himself. JMere talk is the badge of 
the fool; and, being a fool, he takes speech 
at his own valuation, and scatters like it chaff 
to the world's winds. 



THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 

The propulsive power of thought sends the 
human race foi ward to its destiny, which no 
man may read. Whence came we, and whither 
are we going, may find reply in the soul of the 
poet or shape itself in the mind of the daring 
one, who is both poet and philosopher; but 
there is one thing we do know, and hold it to 
us as a promise of what may come: we are 
rising steadily ; and each morrow, which comes 
and speeds into the mists of yestertime, is 
bright with things achieved in man's ceaseless 
struggle to know. 

What a marvelous amount of thought is in 
the long weary interval between the abode of 
the cave dweller and the complex modern 
apartment house, with its elevators, electric 
lights, refrigeration, steam heat and tele- 
phones — ^between the oldest Asiatic hiero- 
glyphic inscriptions and the modern news- 
papers, wliich come from a mechanism whose 
marvelous working is but the expression of 

145 



146 LOOK UP 

many minds given, one after another, to the 
thinking of the things to ultimate perfection! 
We are now benefitting by our inheritance of 
the "accumulated endowment of centuries of 
genius and labor." 

The thought that produced these things was 
astounding in its abundance. JMost of it went 
for nothing that can be counted in direct re- 
sult; but, inasmuch as it represented effort, it 
counted for good. 

No seriously directed effort may be deemed 
futile. In a common enterprise, one man's 
failure warns the other what to shun; what 
byways are barren; what fruits are bitter. 
Thus, he, who has apparently \^TOught to no 
advantage, furnishes the most advantages; the 
signal hghts of his failures make safer the 
way. 

As the race goes onward, it upbuilds, with 
surpassing cunning, structures vast and im- 
pressively devised, which other generations 
tear down, retaining only that which conforms 
to the newest revelation. 

Charles Robert Darwin's fame will rest on 
his "Origin of Species," and he gave to mod- 
ern philosophic thought a tremendous impulse. 



THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 147 

iflashing an intense, white light into dark 
places, rudely stirring the bats and owls of 
bigotry and ignoorance. Later came the son of 
the great man, himself a scientist of high dis- 
tinction, who frankly confessed that radium 
had so upset accepted things that he was com- 
pelled to modify his father's theory of con- 
tinual evolution. 

"It is not my object, nor am I confident," 
said Professor Darwin, "to examine the ex- 
tent to which the theory of natural selection 
has needed modification since it was formu- 
lated by my father and Wallace. The mys- 
tery of hfe remains as impenetrable as ever." 

The more man knows, the more baffling and 
complex becomes that great enigma — the flight 
from darkness to darkness, with a flash of 
light between them, which spans the existence 
of a man. 

Whence cometh? Whither goeth? Why? 
The very spirit that raises man to the con- 
sciousness of his immortal part and makes him 
feel a kinship to God, impels him, in reverent 
profanation, to seek to rend aside the veil and 
stand in the awful radiance of Eternal Knowl- 
edge. 



THE CAUSEWAY OF SHADOW 

Wheeling along in the trackless paths of 
the infinite, the sun for a brief period is ef- 
faced by shadow. As we regard the pheno- 
menon through smoked glasses it brings home 
to us, sharply and directly, an appreciation of 
the mystery of life, as we know it, and that 
which has to do with the myriad worlds that 
circle on their unread journey through the 
infinite. 

If we could but clearly see, the smallest 
things about us might take on a significance 
scarcely less impressive than this vast celestial 
show, which is marked by features that stagger 
and appal the most daring mind. 

The moon, whose shadow hides the face of 
the sun, is such an insignificant body that the 
larger luminary might swallow millions of 
them. In the near heat of the sun this world of 
ours would go Hke a pinch of dust before the 
wind. 

Think of a pathway of shadow one hundred 

US 



CAUSEWAY OF SHADOW 149 

and sixty-seven miles wide, Kke a gigantic 
funereal ribbon, reaching from the wilds of 
Hudson Bay across the Atlantic to Spain and 
Africa and ending in South Eastern Arabia! 

If we had the eyes and the beliefs of those 
men who were struggling out of the path of 
light thousands of years ago, we might follow, 
in this gigantic darkness, a fearsome army of 
shapes, all of the things born of darkness ; evil 
thoughts, which arise from the heart of men; 
their distorted passions, or the cold, well 
shaped ones which are even more terrible; the 
creatures of crime, of murder, robbery, incen- 
diarism and lust; the tragedies of love and 
the hopeless despair, and the embittered souls 
that created them; the grisly horrors of war, 
and all of the things which crowd on the black 
side of our existence. 

And indeed, who will show that they will 
not be there? Though much we know, we, 
indeed, know little. We are still in a world of 
chimeras, and we, ourselves, are but passing 
shapes. This mystery of light and darkness 
bids us once more ask man's eternal question. 

Lafcadio Heme, writing of one of the 
greatest minds the world has ever produced, 



150 LOOK UP 

says: "To every aspect of the problem, Her- 
bert Spencer must have given thought ; but he 
has plainly declared that the human intellect, 
as at present constituted, can offer no solution. 
The greatest mind that this world has yet pro- 
duced — ^the mind that systematized all human 
knowledge, that revolutionized science, that 
dissipated materialism forever, that revealed 
to us the ghostly unity of all existence, that 
re-established all ethics upon an immutable 
and eternal foundation — ^the mind that could 
expound with equal lucidity and by the same 
universal formula, the history of a gnat or the 
history of a sun — confessed itself, before the 
Riddle of Existence, scarcely less helpless 
than the mind of a child." 

As we look at the marvel of the skies, we, 
who have sat at the feet of the great man and 
wondered at his grasp of cryptic things, like 
him, realize that we are helpless, mere children 
in a world of wonder and mystery awaiting 
the reading of the final chapter. 



A WOMAN AISTD A DOG 

The woman's eyes were red with weeping. 
There was a pathetic tremor in her voice as she 
told of her misfortmie. She had passed a 
night of suffering, each moment of it edged 
with the keenest anguish. She had not given 
way at first under the shock of what befell, 
bearing it with admirable fortitude; but, as 
time wore on, the sense of her loss, tortured 
her and Misery sat at her side. 

IMisfortune relentlessly forces home its 
philosophy, and this woman realized that be- 
reavement falls to the whole of the human 
family; that some griefs are as shallow and 
transient as a cloud upon a mountain stream; 
others as deep as the soundless seas. And, 
yet she wondered whether the rest of the 
world had her capacity for suffering. She 
felt that she was going mad. 

To her loss were added grim dread and 
torturing anxiety. The serene course of her 
life had been suddenly and violently disturbed. 

151 



152 LOOK UP 

That upon which she had lavished affection 
and those little attentions of love that fill the 
hours and days with care and caress — ^that up- 
on which most of her life centered — ^was now 
gone from her. Living scarcely seemed worth 
while. The thing itself was little, but to this 
woman the tragedy was great. She had lost 
her collie! 

The same day's chronicle told of a man, 
rough of speech, with hands calloused by toil 
and a heart so tender and so cruelly torn that 
he lay down with a smile and awaited the 
coming of death. He was starving. And, 
also, in his wounded heart there was a hunger 
that might not be put from him. He loved 
not a dog, but a woman, being happy in play- 
ing the dog's part and giving her implicit trust 
and devotion. He toiled in the mines, where 
the damp gloom blanches the face i^dth the 
pallor of Death, who bides there, away from 
the sunlight. 

At last he saved nearly $5,000, in each cent 
of which was the thrill of his effort, the puls- 
ing of his own blood. The future, so long 
dreamed of, and, for long years, so far away. 



A WOMAN AND A DOG 153 

seemed near at hand — that future of serenity, 
rest and love ! 

Then the woman, v/ho dreamed none of 
these things, took the money and fled. 

From the far Pennsylvania mines the man 
walked to New York City, hoping to find her. 
Footsore, despairing and starving, he was at 
last unable to walk more. He felt he was dy- 
ing and cast about for a place to die — to *'die 
like a dog.'' Nor is there anything revolting 
in the way a dog dies. Where it feels the 
summons, with keener sense even than man, 
it seeks some secluded spot, shut out from 
curious eyes, and passes away in the very con- 
tent of death. 

The man found a place in a park and lay 
him face downward on the grass, the smell of 
green and of the moist earth filling his nostrils. 
Heart to heart with Mother Earth, the throb 
of whose mysterious activities he seemed to 
feel, a vast peace came to the soul, and he 
wept — wept like a sick child on the bosom of 
its parent. 

But he was not permitted to die. He lived 
to bear the blow more sturdily than the wo- 
man who lost her dog. But his grief had been 



154 LOOK UP 

no greater ; which shows how completely either 
a great or a little thing may fill one's hfe. 
Also, that the extent of grief cannot be meas- 
ured by the cause. 

And, here the question not ineptly arises, 
which of these griefs was the worthier — that 
for the faithless wife or that for the faithful 
dog? 



CONCERNING CONSCIENCE 

An eminent lawyer making a special plead- 
ing for one of his clients, a giant of our na- 
tional industries, in explaining methods bit- 
terly condemned, said that nothing was done 
by his employer which was not wholly ^vithin 
''business conscience." That, in itself, was 
the weakest of defences; for, in the methods 
that obtain in the struggle in any industrial 
field, the conscience is apt to be wholly lack- 
ing; and, where there is any differentiation as 
to conscience, that force itself is apt to be lack- 
ing. 

The great bard tells us that "conscience 
doth make cowards of us all"; but the 'busi- 
ness conscience," more often than otherwise, 
impels man to be shamelessly courageous in 
moral lawlessness and is apt to make him 
either a brigand or a wolf among men. 

Herein is the whole thing, the measure of 
the good that man may do, and know he may 
fall in the doing! "Conscience is the sense 

155 



156 LOOK UP 

through which God can and does directly 
speak to the soul of man, and through which 
His will can be impressed upon the heart. It 
is endowed with the power of distinguishing 
broadly between right and wrong; but, arti- 
ficially it may be perverted to any extent." 

What is acceptable in business might be 
considered wholly reprehensible in the per- 
sonal relation. Professor Ghent has treated of 
the "class conscience," which may be accepted 
as a perversion, and says: "The degree to 
which adulteration of staple goods and the 
substitution of inferior goods has grown in 
the world's markets appeals to all classes ex- 
cept those of the traders and the fabricators. 
It is simply monstrous; yet, to many, if not 
most, of the members of these latter classes, 
such acts are not only justifiable but emula- 
tory, and the threatened intervention of the 
State in the behalf of pure foods and drugs, 
honest fabrics and 'unsophisticated' merchan- 
dise generally is looked upon as oppressive 
and confiscatory. Even traders who have de- 
veloped or absorbed some general concept of 
social ethics are people, who without violence 



CONCERNING CONSCIENCE 157 

to their conscience justify substitution and 
adulteration/' 

Out of all the base and the worthy in man— 
the divine light, the evil shadovt^, the clogging 
clay and the struggling spirit, the turmoil of 
impulses and ambitions — there arises a white 
purity from which all the virtues grow. It is 
Conscience. And it is because of these con- 
flicting things that Conscience is. It finds its 
fullest and most beautiful expression in 
struggle. It may rise to sublimest heights of 
self-denial, humility and sacrifice. 

We grow strong in moral stature by carry- 
ing cheerfully its burdens, even though they 
bend us to the dust. It has its crown. Like- 
wise its cross, and he who is crucified thereon 
comes into a Kingdom greater than any of 
those of the earth. 



HELPFULNESS AND HAPPINESS 

A big minded college president, observing 
our interesting social conditions, spoke of the 
sad isolation of the very wealthy, who, as he 
drew the picture, move in a narrow circle, de- 
void of worthy ambitions, and, pursued by 
ennui of purposeless ease, live out their lives 
as though they were a race of beings apart 
from the world from which they have arisen. 

The man who lives for himself alone is a 
selfish and unworthy creature. Most of our 
happiness, in the course of a serious, active 
life, arises from the agreeable and fraternal 
relations that we maintain with other men. 
We are not always enabled to aid with dollars; 
for, despite the natural sordidness of human 
nature, there frequently arise situations in 
which money can play no potent part — where 
a kind word and a sympathetic action bear 
value beyond any computation in dollars and 
cents. 

The miser, careless of all else, who starves 

158 



HAPPINESS 159 

his body and soul that his hoard may grow, 
is a figure to which the world gives its desta- 
tion. He is the concrete type of inhumanity, 
a creature lacking in function, so far as the 
great social organism is concerned — a with- 
ered, dead thing. 

Likewise, may a person be a miser in his 
activities; and this is mostly aptly applied to 
the very rich that hve lives of fruitless idleness 
and personal gratification. Many such seek 
happiness, as though it were a thing that could 
be purchased, like an automobile or a yacht, 
not realizing that its possibilities do not always 
lie without them, but more often within. So 
it may be that a man might seek for years 
in all the far corners of the earth for the very 
thing whose seed he carries in his own breast. 

Pleasure, the alluring siren robed in the 
hues of the rainbow — diffusing langorous 
odors, her eyes hazy %vith seduction or flaming 
with passion — ^is a fickle fateful thing, whose 
drink ultimately turns bitter on the lips. 
Satiety is the grim shadow that follows in the 
wake of Pleasure; and when the shadow be* 
comes real and the substance the shadow. 



160 LOOK UP 

then is there tragedy so deep that no words 
may describe it. 

The happiness that springs from witliin is 
a lasting, sustaining tiling, and its possibilities 
are only bounded by the spiritual capacity of 
the person. The very wealthy, it would seem, 
have in their choosing whether to be very 
happy or very miserable; but the brighter al- 
ternative is more apt to become a fact through 
a broad expression of social consciousness. 

A significant event, some time ago, was the 
election of an enormously wealthy woman to a 
Long Island school board. Energetic, sym- 
pathetic, li^-ing upon a magnificent estate, she 
was not content in that exile of the rich, of 
which that ^vise college president spoke. She 
evidently had the same pride of town and lo- 
cality that the most enthusiastic native feels, 
and her determination that the school should 
receive the best that advanced educational 
methods could give was wholly the manifesta- 
tion of a sinere interest. 

In the school the quality of American citi- 
7:enship is determined and any reactionary 
economy here is false economy. Tradition 
must give way to the demonstrated superiority 



HAPPINESS 161 

of what is new and helpful. Madame's in- 
terest ,therefore, was patriotic as well as so- 
cial, and in the expression of these activities, 
she doubtless found no small happiness. It 
is in apparently small things, hke this, that 
one very often gets actually in touch with the 
throb and movement of the big world, and so 
comes into a broader and more optimistic view 
of human life. 



TRUTH AND THE DEMON JEST 

There are some forms of microbes marvel- 
ously tenacious of life, being able to withstand 
heat so excessive as to kill any ordinary forms, 
and survive cold so extreme that the measure- 
ment thereof is beyond the familiar thermom- 
eter. A lie, which is one of the most poisonous 
forms afflicting moral life, is just as stubborn, 
withstanding the heat and cold of condemna- 
tion and spreading its insidious power under 
most adverse conditions. Truth travels more 
slowly, and it is an odd perversity of human 
nature that most of us are prone to accept 
w^hat is unreal and false rather than the 
homely, modest truth. 

It happens, too, that a jest, frequently ut- 
tered with the friendliest intention, becomes 
endowed with this quality of insistence, and, 
preserving through various modifications, be- 
comes accepted as truth; whereas it is a frivo- 
lous untruth. These are the wholly involun- 
tary lies which surround persons and events. 

162 



TRUTH 163 

Disregarded at first because of its obvious 
character and lack of serious quality, it shapes 
itself into a thing of substance, of more power 
to gall and distress. The minstrel's old ques- 
tion, ''When is a joke not a joke?" may be 
answered by saying. When it becomes a trag- 
edy." 

In the lives of a majority of men who have 
stood long and prominently before the pubKc, 
it is safe to say that there are many of these 
grim things which have been repeated so in- 
cessantly, in season and out, that the victims 
finally conclude the torture is part of the cross 
of greatness, and so patiently endure it. 

Sometimes it happens, however, that a pro- 
test is made against the thing which, gro^vn 
from a small beginning, becomes a monster, 
threatening to crush its victim. 

Kentucky has been noted for the beauty of 
its women, the high breeding of its horses and 
the mellow perfection of its whiskey. That of 
course, was before the new order of things; 
but it may safely be said now that apprecia- 
tion of god whiskey in nowise made a drunk- 
ard of a man; for, as in things of higher 
art, moderation governed true appreciation. 



164 LOOK UP 

Rational enjoyment, too, is governed by mod- 
eration, and the glutton, who eats himself into 
insensibility with costly foods, is on a par with 
the white savage, who used to bestialize him- 
self with the finest brand of whiskey. 

Moderation and restraint ever mark the 
gentleman, and, when a Kentuckian was twit- 
ted regarding the "sunshine tipple," he took it 
in good part, and even entered into the spirit of 
the thing himself. So it came to pass that, 
in the general estimation, Kentucky and whis- 
key were always associated; not offensively, 
but in a good natured, neighborly spirit. 
Colonel Henry Watterson himself, who is a 
man of serious purpose, probably has joked 
about it. But it came to pass that the joke 
dropped its smiling mask. 

Colonel Watterson was brought to declare 
he had been grossly misrepresented; that a 
story had been circulated of his raising mint 
on his country place near Louisville. And 
mint inevitably suggested a julep in minds im- 
pressed by the tradition arising from a jest. 

"As a matter of fact," said the Colonel, 
"there has never been a mint julep made on 
my place in Kentucky, and I do not know if 



TRUTH 165 

there is any mint growing there. It is barely 
possible that there is, but I personally do not 
know of it. Now, there are a whole lot of 
people in the country — good people — who 
look on drink with horror ; and while I am not 
a total abstainer, if I take wine with my din- 
ner, as I often do, surely that is my affair and 
not a matter for public comment." 

Colonel Watterson is right. A joke ceases 
to be a joke when it affects any of those vital 
qualities in a man which make for high dig- 
nity, honor and integrity. He is a big man, 
and his genius and ability have enriched the 
history of our times. His long years of con- 
tinuous intellectual efforts clothe him in a 
worth, from which idle and ill considered jests 
fell harmlessly. That he thought fit to protest 
against the tradition showed that he felt 
keenly. A smaller man of the Colonel's years 
and of less mental calibre might have been 

complainsant ; but great souls think deeply 
and feel keenly, and there always comes a 

time in a man's life when, without pretense or 
simulation, he stands for the truth; wilUng to 
be accepted for what he actually is, no more, 
no less. 



USES AXD EXCUSES 

All excuse is the seemly garment with which 
we would cover the unsightly rent of derelic- 
tion, both in the doing and the not doing of 
the thing. A man who is forced into the posi- 
tion of making an excuse is always at a disad- 
vantage, because, no matter how plausible or 
how convincing, his always is the attitude of 
defense. 

Most of us are so constituted that we are 
liable to find justification for nearly every- 
thing that we do. It takes a strong character 
to come out flatly and declare, "The blunder 
is mine, and I am wholly responsible for the 
consequences!" It must so happen at times, 
however, that tliis stand is taken, not volun- 
tarilv, but because there is no other alterna- 
tive. To make a \drtue of necessity is a most 
graceful way in meeting a difiicult situation. 

It was the proud boast of one of the big men 
in American finance that he never was forced 
to make an excuse during his entire career. 

166 



USES AND EXCUSES 167 

That does not mean, of course, that there 
never arose any necessity for the making of it, 
but rather that this shrewd, far-seeing person 
sharply reahzed the disadvantage of such an 
attitude, and, so avoided it. 

Political bosses, strongly entrenched in 
power, adopt the rule to make no excuses, but, 
to use the parlance, "Let it go as it lays/* 
Obviously, that method has its advantage; 
and, if it could be generally ajjplied to all of 
the activities of Hfe, the big problem would 
be easy of solution. But it cannot. There 
are some things so vital in their bearing that 
they have either to be explained or excused. 
Frequently the terms are interchangeable. 

The man accused of murder, who naively 
explained that he was incited to do the deed 
by "a little black man," was only a magnified 
example of a process that is going on all over 
the land every day. 'Not always as frank are 
some financiers who, having done, frequently 
refuse to tell how or why, so that the courts 
are often invoked and agitations set afoot for 
special legislative inquiry. 

In a time of evasion, of adroit shifting and 
gauzy equivocation, the excuse once offered 



168 LOOK UP 

by a Des Moines man came with amazing 
novelty and opened up a field of psychological 
possibility, which might be richly cultivated by 
both finance and politics. As great discover- 
ers are heralded to fame, so should be pro- 
claimed to the world this man who created 
something absolute in its novelty. 

His name was Simon Brandt, and he was 
being sued for breach of promise. Evidently, 
the case was strong against him, for he made 
no denial that he did propose to the fair plain- 
tiff. On the other hand, he admitted that he 
might have done so, but said he must have 
uttered the words, to which she Hstened with 
heightened color, w^hile he was asleep! Simon 
Brandt, further explaining, declared that his 
bachelor life created the habit, w^hich had be- 
come so fixed as to get beyond control; and 
that, in his calls upon the lady, he frequently 
lapsed momentarily into the land of dreams. 

To determine the value of dream utterance 
in law is a vast undertaking. If it can be de- 
veloped that a man may speak intelligently 
and convincingly while he slumber, even talk- 
ing on such a grave responsibility as a pro- 
posal, who shall determine whether a person 



USES AND EXCUSES 169 

be asleep or awake? However, if dream ut- 
terances are valid in law, it must follow that 
most of us, who might fear such an unfortun- 
ate development, must keep awake while 
€Ourting or at business, as every normal man 
should do. 

It is not a new discovery that some men 
who are taking a considerable part in the af- 
fairs of life do inopportunately go to sleep; 
but they are the ones, like Simon Brandt, who 
frequently are put in the position of making 
excuses. There is a great difference between 
him, who takes his business into sleep, and 
him, who takes sleep into his business. Here- 
in lies much of the secret of success and fail- 
ure. 



CRIME COLOR BLIND 

Time was when we heard a great deal of 
^'financial moraiityj" and amazing develop- 
ments showed this value apparently httle in 
evidence. Time was, not long gone when 
there was a wide-spread financial immorality, 
so amazing in its boldness and utter disregard 
of all ethical principles as to stir the entire 
country. Persons formerly held in highest es- 
teem were involved. Revelations showed that 
these men, who stood apparently for the high- 
est ideals in personal life and in their business 
relations, had been well nigh criminal in their 
handling and acquisition of vast amounts of 
money. 

There is but one standard of honesty, and 
that is as fixed and inflexible as the law which 
governs the universe. There can be no modi- 
fication of it, no temporizing, no evasion which 
would render unto others anything less than 
vital, naked honesty. 

It has been noted by more than one astute 

170 



CRIME COLOR BLIND 171 

observer thatj in America, there is a marked 
disposition to sympathize with criminals ; or at 
least to regard, with more or less indifference, 
the crimes that have to do with illegal meth- 
ods of getting money. 

Andrew D. White, a really big Amtrican 
and something of a cosmopolite as well, took 
note of this fact. He said that there should 
be cultivated among the people a greater ani- 
mosity for criminals. That we sympathize 
too much v/ith those who transgress is sadly 
apparent; yet, in the evolution of justice, the 
criminal should be exterminated. The worthy 
feeling in a man should be to battle against 
the lawbreaker with all of his energies; and, 
that feeling, infused into every citizen, should 
in time be productive of greatly changed con- 
ditions. 

Mr. Wliite, diplomat and clear sighted so- 
ciologist, doubtless knew when he expressed 
himself, that the condition was wholly due to 
false ideals, the acceptance of which vitiates 
society, politics and commerciahsm. This is 
the Day of the Dollar, and the man who wins 
it, according to the false standard, is the man 
who achieves and is worth while. 



172 LOOK UP 

That the dollar is the badge of merit is ac- 
cepted by the disheartening many. A funeral 
in New York of a bank burglar, was attended 
by men of conceded respectability, including 
high city officials and business men. Politics 
may have felt a deep sense of kinship, but the 
attendance of the others was explainable on 
no other ground than that the men were lack- 
ing in healthy ideals. A philosophic gambler, 
in explaining the affair, said that the men w^ho 
mourned the bank burglar did so because he 
was thoroughly honest in dealing with his 
friends ; because he had gotten his money at a 
deadly personal risk, whereas other men, 
masked in respectability, too cowardly to take 
a chance, plundered mdows an dorphans. 

There were both sophistry and truth in this 
statement, but the grouping of the rude pro- 
fessional criminal and the genteel one is a 
symmetrical and wholly just conjunction. 
Every criminal does not get his legal deserts. 
If this were so, there might be a cluttering of 
the jails which would seem almost revolution- 
ary. 

It appears, however, that we have gone to 
the far point of a pendulum in this worship of 



CRIME COLOR BLIND 173 

gold, and we are slowly swinging back to the 
other end of the arc. Our moral conscience is 
not dead, despite what some pessimists de- 
clare. 

There has arisen a fervid protest against 
"tainted money" and tainted men. And this 
sentiment will grow because it springs from 
that which is imperishable and will last as long 
as man lives his brief hour and vanishes from 
the earth. Honesty is the golden thread that 
holds society together and makes harmonious 
relation between man and man. As we grow 
in social consciousness it develops, also. At 
times, rank poisonous growths may obscure it ; 
but, it is still there, a tremendous power in the 
nation. 

Better days are coming, and there is no rea*- 
son to feel discouraged. As Mr. White ad- 
vised, *'Do not lend your strength to unreason, 
do not prostitute your genius or talents to in- 
justice; keep your faith in human liberty; 
keep your courage amid the storms of democ- 
racy; never despair of the republic^" 



PAMPERED PRESENT AND PRIM- 
ITIVE PAST 

Our modem life is a wonderland, but most 
of us, who move in it, only scantly appreciate 
it as such. Its mystery is ever before us; the 
soul's ceaseless task is the solving of it, lead- 
ing the way into terrifying abysses of thought, 
or rising to heights of rare elation. The mate- 
rial things are closer at hand: they surround 
us, press in upon us and so become more neces- 
sary in the mere process of li^dng. 

A man buys his shoes and clothing and ac- 
cepts them as matters of fact — as though they 
had always existed — seldom dreaming how 
many complex acti^^ties were brought into 
play to produce ordinar}^ things. 

We work and contribute our part to the 
great economic scheme, and, while we benefit 
others, there is a vast army that works for 
our comfort and well being. The primitive 
man fed and clothed himself \^dth his own 
hands and builded his own habitation. Now 

174) 



PAMPERED PRESENT 175 

none of these things are imperative to us, for 
human effort is so specialized in the care of 
man, and so perfected, that other hands not 
only house, cloth and feed him, but there are 
mse men to look to the care of his entire body ; 
and holy men to look to the welfare of that 
which is in the body, but which is neither of 
flesh nor blood, but of the substance that up- 
lifts and sanctifies prayer. 

There are hands to care for the hair; to 
shave the face, to train the eyebrows, to care 
for the delicate mechanism of the eye, to treat 
the nose, the mouth, the teeth and the ears ; to 
care for the hands, the feet and the entire in- 
terior apparatus which makes the man the 
most wonderful of machines. There is even 
some one to look after the brain; and, so well 
is this world of mystery known in the physical 
aspects, that it is charted and mapped with 
geographic exactness. 

If suddenly deprived of all these helps, a 
modern man would find himself in a dire situ- 
ation. Not being able to master all the pro- 
cesses necessary to the making of cloth, from 
the growth of cotton, or the shearing of wool, 
or the weaving, he would instinctively cover his 



176 LOOK UP 

nakedness with the skin of some other animal, 
just as his ancestors did in the long years a 
gone. Thus he would suddenly be thrust back 
thousands of years in the scale of hfe. 

That all these varied things, which make 
for creati^'e comfort and refine life, might be 
swept away in a breath is a conception which 
is fruitful only in the field of fantastic specu- 
lation it opens up. Apparently we are held 
secure against such a lapse by myriads of in- 
visible bonds, and by the mechanical marvels 
of the age. And, yet there has been furnished 
an example of what might happen when, by 
a sudden freak of events, one is cut off from 
that society, which does so much for the indi- 
vidual and ends by annihilating him; also by 
what slight thiags we are held in our places 
during a particular period, and how easily it 
befalls that we may go lapsing backward. 

A modern steamship, furnished T^-ith the 
latest products of the genius of the time, broke 
a part of her machinery, a bit of steel — the 
very name of which has no significance to the 
average man. It had held them safe on their 
way, and in a practical prosaic century; yet, 
when it gave way the ship, crew and passen- 



PAMPERED PRESENT 17T 

gers drifted back into another century — ^into 
an old fashioned sea romance. 

Hunger gnawed them and they panted for 
fresh water. Ship after ship passed them and 
refused to throw a line to tow them back into 
the present. So they drifted as hopelessly as 
a disabled caravel on an uncharted sea. Fish, 
even sharks, were caught for food, and finally 
the crew, among them descendants of fierce 
Asiatic pirates, rose in mutiny. Nearly three 
weeks of this experience — cut off from the 
world — and finally help came. 

Out of a bit of the strenuous, primitive past 
they were towed back into the matter of fact 
realities of today. 

The men who replaced that piece of frac- 
tured steel did not realize how its injury 
worked a marvel in turning time backward. 
Every subject takes on value or loses it, ac- 
cording to the angle of the smallest things that 
relate to life and the living of it by man, not 
excepting the "eccentric stud" of a ship's en- 
gine 



HIS WIFE AND OURS 

Man may be of the sterner sex, but fre- 
quently he is weakest where he should develop 
the most strength, and the w^oman, whose lot is 
cast with him, exhibits a strength and fortitude 
far beyond her mere physical capacity. 

Character, well formed in woman, is cap- 
able of undergoing the most heart-breaking 
ordeals; for, to character she brings, con- 
sciously and unconsciously, a spiritual quality 
that refines and glorifies love and blesses her 
beloved; that tempers with sympathy all of 
her relations with the rest of the world. Not 
all fully approximate this ideal, but that the 
vest majority possess some of the \drtue is a 
promise of a larger fulfilment. 

"Character in a woman, as in a man, will 
always be found the best safeguard of virtue." 
For its inspiration and direction, it has prin- 
ciple, wisdom and integrity. Under the in- 
fluences of religion and morality, it grows with 
the delicate, ethereal beauty of the meadow- 

178 



HIS WIFE AND OURS 179 

sweet, which mists along the summer stream, 
and the strength of an oak whose rugged 
breasts have been beaten and torn by a thous- 
and storms. 

Wifehood and motherhood bring shaping 
forces to character — something of self-sacri- 
fice and the capacity to suffer. And from suf- 
fering spring virtues which appeal to the 
whole heart of humanity. Love of home, the 
priceless prizing of family ties and conserv- 
ing the honor of a name — all these are ele- 
ments in character which are the sustaining 
power of the family group. 

Theodore Roosevelt in one of his addresses, 
touching on this very point said: "No man 
can be a good citizen, can deserve the respect 
of his fellows, unless, first of all, he is a good 
man in his own family; unless he does his duty 
faithfully by his wife and children." 

And, while a vast throng listened to these 
words, away on a New Jersey mountain farm 
a woman whose face was drawn and seamed 
with mental anguish, tearfully defended her 
husband. He had fallen from a position of 
high trust and was now a fugitive; his name 
sent broadcast through the land by prints 



180 LOOK UP 

showing his face, so that any honest man, 
looking upon it might know that he was a 
thief; that he plundered the rich and the poor 
alike, and — ^worst of all infamies! — that he 
robbed the very friends who aided in his up- 
hfting. 

The wife was a pathetic, inspiring figure* 
Though the whole world deemed the man vile, 
she still clung to her faith in him, holding that, 
in some horrible way, the world had mis- 
judged him. 

"I cannot believe this evil-doing that is be- 
ing said against him," she declared, "and I am 
certain that, if he were here, he could explain 
away the terrible accusations. But what good, 
after all, would it do him to defend himself? 
No matter what he might say or do, no one 
will beheve him. My God! My God! He is 
iTiined forever; but still I hold him to my 
heart!" 

Thus the crudest blow fell upon those to 
whom this man should have "done his duty 
faithfully," and guarded from stress and 
storm. And in the sore trial, the devotion of 
the wife came with the smothered moan of a 
great hurt and a brave showing of unshaken 



HIS WIFE AND OURS 181 

faith. Hers to suffer long and deeply; his to 
return and repent. 

Out of suffering, woman comes like gold 
refined; man, merely humbled and broken. 
The runaway husband returned, and, for- 
given by his wife, if he never realized it be- 
fore, must have felt it then — ^that a good wo- 
man's devotion may accomplish miracles, in 
that it cast out evil spirits and even raise the 
dead. 



THE BOY THAT CAME BACK 

Not all of the lessons that come to us in 
life do we learn. Many pass by unregarded; 
others are conned, soon to be forgotten. The 
punishments meted out by system and by cir- 
cumstances often have a corrective effect that 
persists until gray maturity. We grown folk 
are but "children of a larger growth," and 
what we have failed to learn in the carefree 
days of childhood, is often our loss as the 
years grow upon us. 

In childhood a thing is haply learned and as 
haply forgotten. In that care-free period, 
when responsibility seeks most zealously to im- 
press itself upon us, lies an abundance of life's 
bitter and sweet — for the pleasures and trage- 
dies of childhood are very real. So it is that 
those times of vivid impressions live undying 
in the memory and we revert to them mth a 
pleasure that is tinged with sadness, knowing 
that we can never live them over again. The 
years have exiled us forever from that land 

182 



BOY THAT CAME BACK 183 

bright with dreams, and tuned to laughter 
and plaj^ 

And yet this strange paradox has happened 
— ^that the exiles who mourn their banishment 
are children still, governed by the precept and 
admonition of voices long lost in silence. It 
is a wonderful feeling to be thus, and you may 
recall that one of our most touching poems 
in the language was written by an inspired 
soul who wished to be a child again, "just for 
tonight." 

This story came out of California, telling 
of the romance of a boy, nearly forty years 
old. Twenty-seven years before, he was 
thrashed by his father for refusing to go to 
the store and get a package of smoking to- 
bacco. It might have been that the lad was 
of clean habit, and, hke Robert Heed, of the 
school reader, condemned the use of the "filthy 
weed." However, he finally admitted that he 
was wholly wrong in refusing to do the bid- 
ding of his father. 

Smarting under the punishment, he started 
out ostensibly to do the errand but did not 
return. Years passed, and he was given up for 
dead. Meanwhile ill luck befell his parents, 



184. LOOK TIP 

so that they were in very straightened circum- 
stances. Then, on the twenty-seventh anniver- 
sary of his disappearance, the runaway en- 
tered the house, and, handing" his father a 
package of tobacco said: 

"I couldn't find the brand you usually 
smoke, but I guess this will do," 

Xor was the tobacco the only thing he 
brought with him. He had money enough, 
not only to keep father in tobacco for the rest 
of his life, but to maintain a home and give 
his parents every comfort. He had made a 
tidy fortune in Australia. 

Chancing to meet in that far away land a 
man from his native city, he learned of the 
condition of his parents, and, in a rush of 
memory, all of his childhood came back to him, 
its pleasures and its punishments. And, 
yearning to be a boy again, he figuratively be- 
came the boy, for he said to himself : "I guess 
it's about time I had done dad's errand. I 
realize that I have been quite a bad boy." 

To this man, indeed, was given a rare pleas- 
ure; for, in being a boy again, he experienced 
all of the joys of a return to the forbidden 
land and the melting tenderness which comes 



BOY THAT CAME BACK 185 

from the awakening of those springs, which 
brim over in the heart of man when he looks 
back, from the stern reahties of life, to the 
time when everything seemed possible and 
mother love sweetened all the days. 

How many of us, in mature retrospect, re- 
view the things we might have done and re- 
gret that our hands did not turn to the doing 
thereof! 



WHEN OLD AGE IS EMPTY 

Some men live their lives well nigh to the 
end before they discover that their controlluig 
purposes have been scarcely worth while. To 
him who has carried years of heated activities 
in his more than three score and ten this re- 
ahzation must come with commingled sadness 
and regret, though remorse is likely to be a 
frequent element. Yet, it is age that clears 
the vision and touches conscience mth some- 
thing of the solemnity of the sunset that pre- 
cedes a starless night. 

A man at seventy-two, near the end of the 
journey, who, stripped of all illusion, looks 
back over the way filled with the deeds of his 
doing, is very apt to see things in their true 
proportion; and in what was esteemed great, 
discerning the mean, the petty, the unworthy ; 
in the little things, deemed inconsequent, be- 
holding that which was large with worth and 
personal quality. 

It is both a blessing and a penalty that a 

186 



WHEN OLD AGE IS EMPTY 187 

man is permitted to become wise before death, 
earning the privilege by having journeyed toil- 
fully into the contemplative winter of life. 
It gives him an opportunity to make a read- 
justment, atonement or expiation — a precious 
privilege to the one who feels that a clear con- 
science sweetens the vfay of death. 

What irony must be in the fate that makes 
a man see how pitiful a figure he has been in 
the shaping of the really vital things of life; 
that displays him of a form big only in the 
pride of self and passing power, actuated 
mainly by self-interest and the disregard of 
ethical ideals! 

A master of national poKtics in celebrating 
his seventy-second birthday, while declaring he 
was at peace with all the world, made it clear 
that he was not at peace with himself. During 
his career he had been most savagely assailed 
and brutally abused. He was no theorist. Go- 
ing to the hidden heart of politics, he made 
himself master of its every move, drawing from 
it harmonies of graft and guile, as a master 
hand calls forth the fullest expression from 
a musical instrument. Nor is this simile inapt, 
for he was not without a taste for good music. 



188 LOOK UP 

though he had frequently compelled his foes 
to dance to a dolorous tune. Not, with some- 
thing of melancholy, had he come to the behef 
that much of the time in his long career had 
been only empty dissonance, phantoms of 
sound and of things, melted away, leaving 
him still with something to be desired, to be 
achieved. 

Speaking of politics, he made this declara- 
tion: "But, after all, I do not know that 
the political game is worth while. I do not 
know, and if I had my life to live over I should 
play politics differently from the way I have 
in the past. I shall not tell any one what I 
have in mind. If I did, it would open a broad 
field of discussion and maybe lead to develop- 
ments, so it is just as well to stop with the 
statement that I would pla}^ the game differ- 
ently, if I could play it over." 

All of our necessary activities are worth 
while, and few men were better quahfied than 
this venerable man to determine the worth of 
a thing in politics. So it must be that this 
declaration can be construed either that he 
failed to take advantage of certain, oppor- 
tunities; or, having taken advantage to the 



WHEN OLD AGE IS EMPTY 180 

fullest measure, he, at last was forced to the 
conclusion that, from the abundance of things 
so gained, there was no consolation to a soul, 
which would turn from sordid machine politics 
and calmly gaze upon the setting sun of a life 
full of unhealthful fevers. 



HAZARD OF HOPE 

There is unquestioned wisdom in the admon- 
ition not to carry all of one's eggs in the same 
basket. And, as hfe is full of disappointment 
and unwelcome surprises, it is well not to con- 
centrate all of our hope upon a single earthly 
tiling. Change is the very power that spins 
the globe. Only eternity is stable, and the 
hope that turns its expectant eyes thither is 
the frankest expression of the human soul. 

Hope is the spiritual heart of life, which 
sends its wonderful currents into all of our 
activities, sweetening the days and purifying 
the blood of purpose against discouragement 
and despair. 

It is hope that makes life worth wliile^ — ^the 
unread possibilities of the coming day, which 
will bring to us the snowy argosies of the soul's 
desire. Life without hope is a shadow without 
substance — a sentient death without a prom- 
ise in the morrow, or in the long night which 
knows no morrows. The hopeless, who, through 

190 



HAZARD OF HOPE 191 

suicide, efface themselves, but do a thing 
already done. 

Many of the helpless elect to live, and so it 
is that the world is full of melancholy spectres 
which move and act like flesh and blood, yet 
are of the grave — ^the grave deeper and blacker 
than that fashioned in the sod, for it lies in the 
infinite soul of man. 

Often, when hope lies still in its cerecloths, 
a listless curiosity takes its place, and men, 
who hope for nothing, still linger on to see 
how the play will end. 

The lounger on the Paris boulevards, the 
peculiar type of New Yorker wedded to his 
Broadway — ^both blase and weary with the 
ennui of worldly wisdom — ^walk the thorough- 
fares where each incident and grouping, each 
parade, is an old, old story. The entire lesson 
has been learned and the time of reward and 
surprises is past; but, by the instinct that 
causes a man to cling to familiar things, they 
hold on until the end. 

Men cleave to life and endure its hurts and 
its anguishes either because they are strong to 
bear, or too weak to dare. 



192 LOOK UP 

A suicide extinguishes himself because he 
either knows too much of hfe or too little. 

Diversity of interest gives us broadness and 
adds a value to life commensurate to the things 
occupying our activities. Men, who have con- 
centrated all of their energies upon one point, 
have given to the world marvels of science and 
material gain. But he w^ho makes the single 
compensation of self must have the strength 
to bear what dire results may follow. He must 
be so moulded as to stand the shock of the 
earthquake and the stroke of the thunderbolt. 

A weak man, assuming the burden, is over- 
come in a flash. Small objects take upon them- 
selves gigantic shapes in small minds, and 
trifles are frequently tragedies. When Richard 
Mormongue entered his apartments on the 
fourth floor of the Rue Popincourt, Paris, he 
found that his landlady had broken his pet 
pipe. He at once committed suicide by leap- 
ing from a window 

This man's life was centered on a pipe! 
Therein, mingled with the rich brown coloring 
of the meerschaum, were his content of the 
present and his hope of the future. When he 
was gone the neighborhood would recall with 



HAZARD OF HOPE 193 

admiration what a perfect pipe he possessed! 
That was something to live for, something 
which would give importance even to death! 

So he thought, simple minded, honest creat- 
ure! And v/hen this thing, which held all of 
his hope and affection, was shattered, life 
owned nothing to hold him to it. 

Thus it is that we may exalt httle tilings or 
hold life itself small. And yet the world is 
made up of comparisons ; and what is pitiably 
small, and even frivolous to one man, is a 
thing so vast, so absorbing to another that even 
his life thrown in the balance may not out- 
weigh it. It is this very fact that gives the 
world its balance 



TRAGEDY OF SUCCESS 

The tragedies of failure are written in 
blood and tears. Grim would be the stain in 
the Book of Endeavor were it not that, from 
the bitterness of failure, good must ultimately 
come. It is so ordered that some men must 
grasp full blossoming, golden petals of success 
while others receive only the cruel sting of the 
thorns. 

Failures are danger signals which mark for 
fresh adventurers the barren desert spots and 
the depthless pits that await the unwary foot- ! 
step. The world has gone onward to a sure 
development over the whitening bones of 
failure, just as the great tide of ci\dlized life 
has swept over the deserts and prairies of the 
West, transforming them into farms, dotting 
them with cities ; and, in the bleak, melancholy 
stretches, where thousands of lives faltered and 
were extinguished, calling into existence by the 
magic of modern science, gardens and vine- 
yards which "blossom like the rose." 

194 



TRAGEDY OF SUCCESS 195 

To the man, moved to effort by ambition, 
failure is only an incentive to renew the strug- 
gle; and, as it brings a keen enlightenment, it 
must often happen that one really finds in the 
wrecked and futile things a value which fairer 
causes could not yield. 

More poignant in its bitterness, in the un- 
speakable irony of the thing, is the tragedy 
of success — success which is still a failure. 
An inventor, who had put his very life blood 
into the things he had originated for more than 
forty years, died by his own hand. He patented 
more than sixty inventions. They enriched 
a score of men; but, though this man had the 
cunning to wrest from nature and the laws 
of mechanics secrets which made for progress 
and enlightenment, he was unable to garner 
any of the fruits thereof. 

Though he actually achieved largely, this 
was his only compensation. To the person, 
who works with a spirit of unselfish enthu- 
siasm, achievement is half compensation. And 
yet it is clear that mere achievement — ^the ela- 
tion of the thing done — ^is not sufiicient to meet 
the material demands of a man who must live. 



196 LOOK UP 

The butcher and the baker must be paid; rent 
time comes around with ciockhke regularity. 

The bit of mechanism that marks the pass- 
ing of time is either a thing of golden promise 
or a diabolic steel-nerved monster, devoid of 
sympathy and heart. Our lives are governed 
by it. It is a tyrant, ever after us with its goad 
or the beckoning of some sweet seduction. 

To him who realizes how brief is the span 
pi human existence, the clock looms with the 
majestic grimness of fate. To this man who 
had come along a toilsome way, led on by the 
thing which he could never grasp, the clock, at 
last, must have proved a horror. When dis- 
couragement and despair at last seized him, 
and he felt how fruitless all of the years of toil 
and study had been, he might well have asked 
a question which men have asked who have 
I watched the struggles of humanity: "Why? 
(Whither are we going?" 

The inventor, who reaped notliing but fail- 
ure from success, at least had the compensa- 
tion of knowing that he contributed something 
to the benefit of his brothers. Though little 
material gain came to him, still he will be 



TRAGEDY OF SUCCESS 197 

reckoned as one who reaped abundantly; for 
he who achieves, though not decked with the 
purple of fame and riches, is of the elect 
among men. 



BEAUTY AND LIFE 

It may be that beauty is the ultimate ex- 
pression of the soul, but it does not hold this 
relation to life. Here, it is the changeful flower 
broidered on the robe of materialism. To the 
seeing eye, it is found on every side, and de- 
velops in obscure places, hke a thought that 
struggles through the darkness to light and 
being. 

If the earth and its children were fashioned 
in absolute beauty it is to be feared that it 
would be full of sweet but terrible satiety, so 
overwhelming in its character as to lack it ; for 
character is a thing that finds its strength and 
stature in comparison. 

The lover, moved to extravagant flights of 
speech by the beauty of his mistress, may de- 
clare that his passion is infinite — that in every 
face, in every star he sees the features of the 
woman he adores. A daring and gratifying 
flight, maybe; but if the imagery were to be 
realized, it is not difficult to foresee that the im- 

198 



BEAUTY AND LIFE 199 

varying sameness of the faces, which looked 
upon him from every side, would soon drive 
him insane. 

Eeauty of person is a gift of heredity and 
more often of a caprice of nature, which the 
iwisest minds fail of explanation. We cannot, 
all of us, be of the Venus and Apollo types, 
the reahzation of which, however, is nothing 
of our own doing; for we have no selection in 
the allotment of our raiment of the flesh. Some 
must, therefore, be fair; others homely. The 
endowment of the first may bring poignant 
tragedy; the other is not inherently tragic. 

Fair face and shallow heart, too frequently 
go together; and homeliness is often softened 
and transfigured by a beauty beside which 
formal types become vapid and unreal. Most 
of the women who have left their impress on 
history were not abundantly endpwed with 
beauty; but they were beautiful, nevertheless, 
creating, through mastery of self and subtle 
acquirement, a perfect illusion. 

Nor does one have to go far afield for ex- 
amples. Think of those among your own ac- 
quaintances, who, by personal charm, are en- 
abled to laugh at physical handicaps. A charm- 



200 LOOK UP 

ing "vvoman, known from ocean to ocean, 
besides being no longer young, is as abundant 
in lively expression as she is of flesh. Yet, 
withal, a confirmed pessimist, full of the bile 
and rebellion of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and 
Strinberg, and who fails to see the utility of 
mere woman, after talking a half hour with 
this one declared that she had the wholesome, 
light-hearted fascination of a girl, and even 
seemed to take on the semblance of one. 

Thus beauty of character, of disposition 
and aspiration may so triumph over the dere- 
lictions of the flesh as to produce the very 
thing that is lacking. 

The pathetic suicide of the daughter of a 
distinguished father because she was not come- 
ly 'like other girls" was due to an acutely sen- 
sitive nature. The quality in homeliness, 
which makes for beauty, is strength. 

The master of color and refined sensuahsm, 
Gautier, whose religion was beauty, looked 
with horror upon the blight of old age, the re- 
morseless touch which would take the bloom 
from the cheek, the brightness from the eye 
and choke, with ashes, the fires of the heart. 
Yet he was beautiful to the end ; for, despite his 



BEAUTY AND LIFE 201 

years, the spirit in him was undimmed. Home- 
liness is a tragedy to many a woman who does 
not know how many of the essentials of real 
beauty actually lie within her. 

It is possible for a homely woman actually 
to think herself into beauty. 



ASHES OF DESTINY 

Youth sees through rosy glasses; the bleak 
and lovely of life, aHke, take on dehcate, mel- 
low tones — elusive ghosts of color beyond the 
power of any material brush. Old age, through 
flawless spectacles, wliich keens the vision and 
reveals vivid pictures, sharply defined con- 
trasts in light and shade and melancholy mo- 
notones in gray. 

Sorrow's banner is gray, symbolizing the 
mist of tears, the sunless yesterdays of sorrow. 
Elack gives to grief, deep, tragic, inconsolable 
grief that no word may measure, no plummet 
sound; that no one may comfort; that nothing 
may lighten save the touch of God. Those 
differences in heart-pain enable us to lapse 
naturally from gray to black, like the eastern 
sky at sunset. 

Grief is a tragedy ; sorrow an intermezzo of 
tears. In some Hves both are combined, and 
we have either a soul that rises triumphant 
from its lacerations or one that, hopelessly 

202 



ASHES OF DESTINY 203 

overwhelmed, utters a plaintive cry of pain 
and vanishes into the eternal to-morrow, A 
septuagenarian who had gatherd for long 
years found himself beyond the allotted span 
of man, not holding the blooms of life, but 
rank weeds. Then he sent a bullet into his 
head, having first penned this message to his 
son: 

"You can't have things as you want them. 
In your old days you can't have them that 
way. You've got to prepare in your youth 
for that time when your hair turns gray. If 
I had it all to do over again I would have quite 
a different ending. But that is impossible, so 
I must go." 

Happy old age, it will be seen, owes an in- 
estimable debt to youth. The stripling flushed 
with confidence, who steps forth into the world 
of stress and struggle, carries in his hand all 
the secrets of the future, though he may not 
divine what will follow in the end. 

Time, rich in potentialities, one minute of 
which is something worth an eternity, men dis- 
sipate with the prodigal spirit of the spend- 
thrift. Time is our brief but priceless herit- 
age, and he who lives no idle, no unproductive 



204 LOOK UP 

moment is he who builds for a symmetrical 
life, rounded into that content which shapes 
old age into a benediction. 

One man stands strong and rugged in his 
failure; the other is overcome. They are as a 
stern admonition to the strong and the weak 
who go out in the blossoming fields of Worth 
While to "gather handfuls while we may" — a 
lesson that life is a tiling of purpose and that 
no one may disregard the sterling and true 
without eventually bearing a bitter penalty. 

Peace may be the reward that awaits at the 
end of the way; and peace may come to us in 
the sere reaches of the troubled journey. To 
him who loves nature, despite the forces which 
break with harsh discords mto his existence, 
life cannot be wholly unlovely. He may reap 
along the way that which will be realized in its 
fullness at the end. Benson, the English poet, 
in his verses, "By the Wier," sounds, mth com- 
pelling charm, this note: 

Ah me! but we forget to live! 

We sell sweet days for wealth and pride; 
And when we have no more to give 

The soul is still unsatisfied! 
Well I have labored, I have planned; 

For once my plans, my labors, cease; 
God lays to-day a loving hand 

Upon my shoulders, saying "Peace." 



MAN AND HIS MOTHER 

By the love and devotion given to his 
mother may a man be judged. The fullest! 
measure betokens usually an upright man, apt 
to be generous, sympathetic and considerate. 
No higher praise can be said of a man than 
"He is devoted to his mother." It is a bill of 
character, written so that all may understand 
and read in between the words other things 
which have to do with the moral fibre. 

It frequently happens, however, that a man 
whom the world considers vile or unworthy 
finds his only honest instinct in his relations 
with the woman who bore him. One of the 
most odiously notorious of a gang of corrupt 
legislators, a bloodless, keen-minded person, 
with no sense of civic integrity unless it re- 
sulted in personal gain; a man as indifferent 
to public opinion as he was shameless in his 
relation to conscienceless corporations ; cynical, 
boldly defiant in the strength of his malign 

205 



206 LOOK UP 

power — this man's one redeeming point was 
his love for his aged mother. 

It was probably the only real thing in his 
selfish life, and it outweighed all else. And, 
as one was spurred to utterance of hot denun- 
ciation by outraged decency, a view of this 
other side of the master corruptionist was apt 
to cause a modified judgment of the actual 
man. 

It is held that no man is completely vile, 
and, though this is reassuring and what we 
would like to believe, still there are cases in 
which the rule is sharply questioned. The 
"vilest man in the world" was at one time sen- 
tenced to a long term of imprisonment, and, 
from the nature of his crime, it might have 
been surmised that he was never born of 
iwoman. 

The needy mother who begged her "emi- 
nently respectable" son for money for the bare 
necessities of life, and who was driven awav 
and threatened with arrest, drank to the dregs 
the cup of ingratitude Crucified upon the 
cross she had borne, her parched, withered 
lips were moistened by the bitterest draught. 
The unnatm^al son voiced his justification; 



MAN AND HIS MOTHER 207 

but, if all other virtues were swept away and 
only "decency" remained, what sufficient justi- 
fication could he have? 

The widespread indignation over this re- 
markable case was one of the most encouraging 
signs of the times. The sacredness of mother, 
which has come to us through long, dim years, 
stands unshaken. Honesty may be a mere by- 
word, honor become a thing of derision and 
infamy, and graft sit in the high places, but 
this one thing, which the thinking anunal holds 
jealously to, is universal in its appeal. 

The mother of the race, the bearer of its 
travail and anguish, she will be haloed in the 
hearts of men as long as the earth lasts and 
creatures come helplessly in^o it from the 
mortal dark. 

Woman always has been elevated, admired 
and adored by civilized man, for she is that 
part of him which holds in her hand the cradle 
of the world — ^the destiny of nations. Man 
gives her respect, love and a place in his sphere 
of usefulness. As the queen bee brings forth 
her race and has others slave and die for her 
without one regret, so does man's labor really 



208 LOOK UP 

circle around that throne upon which sits 
woman. 

If the past could only roll back its dreary 
memories; if the sleeper could only open his 
eyes; if the aeons of time could unfold them- 
selves; if from the distant depths of the long- 
centuries gone a picture could be seen, it 
would be that of woman. And from the skein 
in her hand would be threaded the only tie that 
has come down to us from the dim past, 
through the long avenues and myriads of time 
unto the light of the present day — ^the death- 
less tie of inheritance. 



THE "THOUGHTLESS POOR'* 

A well nurtured, complacent matron, serene 
in the assurance of care and keep, took occa- 
sion, in addressing a fashionable meeting, to 
criticise the "thoughtless poor." Amid 
warmth, light and comfort, from which the 
gaunt shadow of want is as remote as the crea- 
tion of a fairy tale, some persons like to sit and 
discuss the riddle of poverty as though it were 
a mathematical problem and one dealing with 
cold figures, and not with human beings. 

This good lady was politely indignant and 
curiously lacking in sympath}^ because the 
poor persisted in bringing so many children 
into the world ! Even a casual study of society 
will reveal the fact that many, who lack the 
courage to speak with such brutal frankness, 
regard the fact as a well-nigh unpardonable 
offence. 

Less births mean less souls to struggle and 
to suffer; less to struggle and to fail; less of 
the helpless and unproductive to burden and 

209 



210 LOOK UP 

wear upon the healthier part of society. They 
mean, also, the beginning of the decay of a 
nation. Any attempt to arrest the normal 
expression of life entails the most disastrous 
results to the social body, and the individual 
as well. The Rochester priest who draped the 
baptismal font in mourning tragically sym- 
bohzed the condition among his flock. 

"The thoughtless poor!" In the terror of 
want there is a task unending, bringing dull 
pain, and most of it whitened here and there 
by exalted self-sacrifice. 

It is impossible for a well-fed person, with 
no fear of the morrow, to argue from the \aew- 
point of a man whose innards are clutched 
by the talons of hunger, and who desperately 
sets about to get food for those who cling to 
him in the abyss of the submerged. "For men 
must work and women must weep," runs the 
song. And when men cannot work they may 
weep, likewise. 

^^Tiat a blessing there is in tears that spring 
freslily from a strong emotion! Some griefs 
and tortures would kill like virulent poisons 
could they find no fluent expression. Tears 



"THOUGHTLESS POOR" 211 

iwet the hard bread of God's poor and sanc- 
tify it. 

The voice of divine hope makes heaven near 
for the suffering poor and the children of the 
poor. Unloved, save by few ; shunned and neg- 
lected or studied as creatures barely human^ 
and put down as a sore care or a dire menace — 
outcasts of the earth too small to hold them — 
there is still room for them and the millions 
to follow in the breast of the Almighty, where 
they may rest in Eternal Peace. 

Thousands of pale, worn women, many of 
them actually starving, at one time paraded 
in London — ^wives, sisters and daughters of 
unemployed working men. They went to beg 
the Prime Minister to call Parliament to vote 
money for public works. Few persons looked 
upon the demonstration unmoved. "The dep- 
utation," saj^s a spectator, "was composed of 
women — and women typical of the class whose 
claims they had come to urge. They wore the 
pitiful garb in which the sordid poverty of a 
great city is clad, and some of them carried in 
their arms wailing children, whose crying not 
even the presence of a Prime Minister could 
hush." 



212 LOOK UP 

And later nearly ten thousand unemployed 
men held a demonstration, some of their ban- 
ners bearing these devices: "There is a Limit 
to Human Endurance/' and "Curse Your 
Charity! We Want Work." To a man will- 
ing to work, but unable to get it, charity comes 
with a sting. He is forced to accept that 
which takes away his independence. Formal 
charity is a cold, mathematical proposition, 
and too frequently becomes a scourge and a 
mockery. John Boyle O'Reilly, whose great 
heart overflowed with human kindness, once 
referred to 

Organized charity scrimped and iced 

In the name of a cautious, statistical Christ. 

Sacrilege? No, Only the reproach of cold 
fact. If sacrilege there be, it was in calling 
some charities Christian. Many desperate 
souls have willingly gone to death rather than 
bear the humiliation. Self-respect is thus fre- 
quently held dearer than life. 

But one will never fully understand and be 
able to give intelligent, warm sympathy and 
to realize how the remedy is to be brought 
about until he has descended into the pit and 



"THOUGHTLESS POOR" 21S 

beheld the awful things that are there; until 
he has felt a blood kinship to the pale people 
and held in his own heart all of the anguish, 
all of the tortures and pain that make the 
cross upon which the abject poor are crucified. 



DEVOTION OF THE DUMB 

The friendship of the dumb beast for man 
is one of the most beautiful of attachments. 
It is frank, it is unselfish, and never, at any 
time, is it tainted by the hypocrisy that rankly 
overgrows the relations of humans. 

The worst, and, at the same time, the best, 
may be said in the truism, "A beast may eat 
you, but it will never lie to you."" Insomuch 
is the. beast exalted above man, who will not 
only lie, but rend and devour his brother in 
the hunger of acquisition — a hunger far more 
terrible than that which drives the monarch of 
the desert to slay. 

The increasing complexities and artificiali- 
ties of life so cloak us, so influence thought 
and action, that it not infrequently happens 
that a man becomes divorced from his real self. 
Or, if still conscious of that self, he is not 
honest* in his obligations to it. 

Unreality and insincerity mark the spirit of 
the times, and more than ever has friendship 

214 



DEVOTION OF THE DUMB 21S 

become a fragile, pictorial growth of a fair day 
season, to be torn and shattered by the first 
blast of foul weather. 

This is not a note of despair; for the oaks 
of friendship still flourish in their sublime 
strength, beaten and torn by storm, but still 
deep-rooted and triumphant, yielding a sooth- 
ing shade in which the footsore, the heart- 
weary and the sorely smitten may find rest, 
comfort and inspiration. This symbol of 
strength and constancy, which inevitably oc- 
curs to him who would adequately express the 
thought, takes us back to nature and the be- 
ginning of things. 

At the beginning always is the truth to be 
found. The man who is the friend of beast 
and bird is quite near the beginning. Such a 
man was Peter Shannon, now dead, who in 
his thirty-five years at the Central Park 
menagerie knew and sympathized with the 
moods of all the jungle folk, from the tiniest 
bird to the bulkiest elephant. They sensed 
him as their friend, and, in that strange com^ 
munion that may grow between the dumb and 
the speaking animal, explained to him the mys- 
tery of the woods; of the wordless message of 



216 LOOK UE 

the seasons which tells beforetime what is to 
be; of the voice that fills with vague whisper- 
ings the woodland night, and the hurrying 
ghosts that pass at dawn. 

He learned their msdom, and so learning 
came closer to nature. Therefore, he was a 
man of heart, who felt for all Hving things, 
and who, like his dumb friends, was honest in 
his friendship, steadfast and unquestioning. 

A London reviewer, writing of the verse of 
Charles G. D. Roberts and Bliss Carman, said 
the one raises the beast to the level of man; 
the other sinks man to the plane of the beast. 
Nor is the latter so unfortunate as it sounds, 
for the verse of Mr. Carman, while smelhng 
of the earth and breathing an ardent kinship 
to beast and bird, reveals a depth of soul and 
a human sweetness as grateful to the jaded 
senses as the balsam of the pines or the wild- 
wood odors after a spring rain. 

Man in spirit may "sink" to the animals and 
learn much. JNIen with bigger brains than 
Peter Shannon have given their lives in study 
without learning as much of nature, and the 
wisdom there abiding, as he. He took not 



DEVOTION OF THE DUMB 217 

l)rain with him, but heart. What came to him 
in return was satisfying. 

He felt a close personal relation to the bird 
that flew to his hand. The tigress, in her 
striped dress, lazily stretched to show all of 
her sinuous beauty, and narrowed her eyes 
dreamily as he stroked her head. She counted 
it a caress and knew it was sincere. She might 
have turned and mangled him. Many a woman 
has thus repaid caresses. 

Mayhap these things and many others 
thought Peter Shannon, as the knowledge of 
human nature and the nature of animal kind 
grew upon him apace. Who shall say that his 
dumb friends did not lead him to a wisdom 
beyond the teaching of books? 



THE HOPE OF THE WORLD 

It happened at one time that in the heart 
of a master of men there was shaped a dream, 
a strange and beautiful vision. He saw the 
races who had regarded one another with sus- 
picion, envy and hate and who, in dispute, had 
fallen upon one another and slain- — he beheld 
them throw aside the sword, while their angry 
voices were softened and hushed. A measure- 
less calm had fallen upon them, and, as each 
man looked into the eyes of his brother, he saw 
there a kindlier light, an expression that be- 
spoke a kinship never before felt by men, one 
for the other. 

They turned their faces toward a broad 
white way, a road level as a plain and spotless 
as the snow that lies on unsealed peaks. It 
was bordered with trees, which sent from their 
great arms a generous shade. Flowers broi- 
dered the road, rich, profuse blossoms in a gay 
riot of color, filling the air with a perfume that 

218 



HOPE OF THE WORLD 219 

brought a strange content to the soul. For 
this was the road to Peace. 

The city shone in a white glory, so that the 
eye was dazzled. The men who beheld it 
paused in awe. It seemed as a place that no 
mortal hand had builded, and in their hearts 
was a conflict of feeling — ^the old warring with 
the new. The new whispered that here was the 
beginning of a higher hfe, where men came 
well nigh into the God-gift, casting aside those 
which had marked the savage man. The old 
feeling, which measured its strength by thou- 
sands of years and was in the very blood, told 
them that what they saw was unreal, the 
shadow of nothing that existed or ever would 
exist. 

Yet their hearts swelled in a common hope 
as they beheld the great temple, majestic and 
serene, its columns rising like giant arms to 
uphold mighty sculptured burdens. The steps 
flowed in a giant cascade from the entrance, 
wide enough to bid the passing of all races 
and those that were yet imbom, even to the 
end of time. 

So they entered. And it seemed that the 
temple walls stretched away to the four sides 



220 LOOK UP 

of the world and the place was roofed by the 
stars. About an altar glowed a soft, steady 
radiance, which now and again flared and was 
shaken as though in the breath of the wind. 
And they knew, though no word was spoken, 
that the flame was the Hope of the World. 

On the altar was a full blown rose, than 
which the snow was not whiter. A token, they 
knew it; and to them it carried a new signifi- 
cance. The olive branches beside it were ber- 
ried with the blood. At the base of the altar 
was a sword, red mth rust, over the cold hori- 
zon of whose edge millions of souls had passed 
in anguish. Down its runnels had flowed blood 
in a tide sufficient to make the swinging earth 
show crimson before the affrighted stars. 

The races of men looked and pondered. 
And unnumbered dead came trooping up the 
twilight way of the past, a horrid, distorted, 
grewsome troop, and, gazing on the scene, 
murmured in muffled voices: "Have we died 
m vam i 

And the races of men thereupon made cer- 
tain agreement and went their ways. Still the 
old spirit was strong within them, and when 
differences grew betwixt two they reached for 



HOPE OF THE Vv^OHLD 221^ 

their swords, even as the savage forefathers of 
the race had done. It came to pass that when 
the City of Peace was called to their memory 
they answered by word and action: 'That is 
only a dream!" 

Some dreams are woven of the silver and 
golden threads that brighten the black mantle 
of sleep — wonderful creations, filled with flow- 
ers, music and love, with wealth and fame, or 
vivid with bewildering grotesques that fade in 
the waking hours, like a dance of nymphs in 
the passionless gray of a woodland morning. 
Then, too, there are other dreams more beauti- 
ful than the rest, which have to do with living 
and those who have not yet come into life — 
dreams born of man's passionate longing for 
nobler things and not of the fabric to be dissi- 
pated by a down-sped mind; dreams which, 
by their very nature, are destined to take form 
and substance and assume a place among ac- 
tual things. They have the deathless vitality 
of the soul, as they are themselves an expres- 
sion of soul, and will persist until they are at 
last clothed in glory of realization. 

To the ordinary eye, the way may not seem 
broad and v/hite, its temple may not loom with 



222 LOOK UP 

impressive majesty and the altar hold no great 
white rose; but the City of Peace holds this 
beauty in the hearts of kindly, wide-visioned 
men who strive for the betterment of the race. 
It is a reality and the way thither is now being 
pointed by the hand of God! 



THE BEATITUDES OF BLOOD 

When a man is overflowing with healthful 
activities and possessing sound convictions, 
and not only voices them, but puts them into 
deeds, the verdict is apt to approximate him 
as being full of "good red blood." So, also, is 
characterized a narrative abundant of daring. 
Blood is a great determining factor in the 
human race. It has been shed so prodigally 
that the very earth sickened ; yet each drop of 
it is so precious that no man may gauge the 
value thereof. 

Some men shed it, exalted by the noblest 
feeling; others, marked by the basest of im- 
pulses. Yet greater than the man who has had 
his veins opened in the war is he whose blood 
flows into his work through the energies of his 
hand and brain. 

At one time love was glorified above labor, 
and in this rose-hung period, which came as a 
languorous lull before a great awakening, the 
man who could turn a verse was greater than 

223 



224 LOOK UP 

the lords of material achievement. This is no 
less true to-day, but we do not feed on poesy, 
and the folk that write acceptable verse are as 
numerous as the singing sands of the Persian 
stor}^, and even as musical. In time agone one 
man, Frederick Von Trenk, wrote his heart's 
passion in blood, and the verses, though the 
interpretation of an extraordinary mood, evi- 
dently lacked the vitalitj^ of the rhythmic 
broideries of some of the cavalier poets. 

The story was brought to light some time 
ago by the sale of the "Blood Bible" at Bres- 
lau. It was bought by one of the descendants 
of the poet for $200. Thus runs the tale: 
Von Trenk, imprisoned and bound in chains 
for making love to the King's sister. Princess 
Amelia, whiled away the weary bom's by writ- 
ing sonnets in honor of the lady of his love. 
They were inscribed on twent}^ blank pages in 
this Bible, a gift of the Princess — and every 
word was written with his o^vn blood. 

It is unusual writing fluid that makes this 
stor}^ stand out, and blends, with its crimson, 
the glo^ving tints of romance. Yet, in compari- 
son to the actual, productive deeds of the blood, 
this one is not only not extraordinary but triv- 



BEATITUDES OF BLOOD 225 

ial. Every action of our lives is shaped in 
blood ; not so that the scarlet flows in the sight ; 
but each thing we do is one of the innumerable 
burdens borne hy the tide of life, whose un- 
ceasing flow means existence. When its warm 
tides cease to ebb and flow there comes a twi- 
light calm, which men call death. 

It is said that, by Nature's wonderful proc- 
ess, the body is completely changed every seven 
years, so that in the septenary dispensation, no 
man should deem his material part bej^ond re- 
demption. The body of us is a changeful hu- 
man document, written in blood. 

The laborer ho bends to rearing an edifice, 
taxed by toil until his muscles ache, puts blood 
into his work ; for, as the effort burns away the 
tissues, the fresh, vivifying blood supplies what 
is lacking — that which he has put into his task. 
What treasures the blood has conveyed to the 
minting brains of Plato, Aristotle, Marcus 
Aurelius and the rest of that dim army which 
pioneered the thought of an endless future, or 
to those of our great moderns who have accom- 
plished marvels of scientific achievement! 

There is blood in every thought, so that when 
the thought becomes the thing, the blood is still 



226 LOOK UP 

in the new form. The fast express train that 
meteors its way through the night at seventy 
miles an hour, though composed of steel and 
wood and animated by heart of fire, is, never- 
theless, a thing of flesh and blood as much as 
the iron-nerved man who holds the engine 
lever ! 

The blood of man is in all things that come 
from his hand. It is in the great thought that 
springs from his brain, with this thing added — 
soul. Too precious is it to be torrented lq a 
modern saturnalia of death or even to trace the 
despairing song of a lover ; for in a single drop 
of blood lie potentialities which might change 
the spirit of the entire world. 



FEET OF CLAY 

Big men frequently have little vanities. An 
individual whose power might sway a nation; 
a soldier whose feats of arms have won the 
admiration of nations, or a giant of finance or 
industry, whose activities flow around the 
world, may bend submissive to things so puny 
and of such actual unworth that even weak 
men look on in astonishment and pity. Which 
shows how difficult it is to approximate the 
ideal of the god-man — ^the man who not only 
raises himself to great powder above liis fellows, 
but who, by this very fact, becomes divorced 
from the failings and fancies of ordinary men. 

Fiction has created the figure; but fiction 
either adds something to actuality or withholds 
something of the unlovely truth. Power in- 
creases the stature of a man. It envelopes him 
with a purple that marks him from his 
brothers. It gives to him, therefore, an aloof- 
ness and holds one apart from a handshaking, 

227 



228 LOOK UP 

slap-on-the-shoulder acquaintance. Familiar- 
ity is checked and abashed. 

This, in fact, is the meed of the great, as 
[well as a condition that develops without con- 
scious effort. Power has aureoled many a saint 
and haloed many another that will never reach 
the elevation of a niche. But the aureole and 
the halo are not about the heads of common 
men. We are prone to believe that they are 
for saint and superman. 

A daring, fascinating theory, this of the 
superman. A demi-god cannot afford to have 
feet of clay, though his hands be formed of it. 
Take any one of the great figures that have 
risen through the sheer force of a powerful, 
insistent passion, and smite his feet, which, a 
sky-flight from his head, press upon the earth, 
and you have revealed a man who can feel as 
other men do; for the greatest of earthly tasks 
is to throw off the thraldom of the clay. 

It has been related that John D. Rockefeller, 
whose bald head has indelibly impressed the 
personality of the "Oil King" upon thousands 
who have beheld him in the flesh, and remote 
milKons who have seen him pictured in print — 
it was told, in circumstantial detail, how he 



FEET OF CLAY 229 

made his appearance at church under the 
friendly, but plainly artificial, protection of a 
wig! 

Nom a man who wears a wig, or who dyes 
his hair or mustache, deceives no one except 
himself. If Mr. Rockefeller actually did wear 
a hirsute thatch it would be vastly interesting 
to know the mental process by which he was 
led to cover, even for a brief period, the hair- 
less dignity of his impressive pate. 

His is a remarkable head — in one sense, the 
greatest head in the world! There is nothing 
of it to be apologized for. If apology were 
necessary, his domination over vast activities 
and the mountain of gold he has piled up stand 
effectively to offer it. By his head is shown 
the whole story of his achievement, of his pas- 
sions and his power. It is as much his monu- 
ment as is his wealth, and more so, too — ^it is 
the house wherein is stored a marvelous mind. 
Just as soon deface it with a mask of another 
man's hair as to put a mansard roof on a Greek 
temple. 

The force which brought this even-pulsed, 
clear-sighted man to do so must have been 
resistless. 



230 LOOK UP 

Can it be that he became ashamed of his 
baldness? It is by no means discreditable or 
unworthy. 

Can it be that vanity prompted the act — 
vanity that made him wish his head was like 
that of another man? 

Nevertheless, this much, at least, stands out 
clearly: A man who wears a wig, after a 
period of distinguished baldness, is afflicted 
with a vanity at a time when vanities should 
have all fallen away — or are returning afresh 
for a revived youth. In either case the super- 
man has shown that his feet are of clay. 



GOING TO THE DOGS 

We are in a period of what is popularly 
called "nature study"; and into great cities, 
where men are crowded and herded, there 
comes a call to God's open spots and revela- 
tion of what beauties and marvels are placed 
there in the great scheme of nature. Also, we 
are given a nearer and more friendly view of 
animal hfe. Thus it is, while we are enjoying 
an increasingly high state of development, so 
refined as to leave us with diminished humani- 
ties, this reversionary summons calls us back 
to primitive but healthful things. 

As we get nearer to nature, we approach 
closer to the heart of truth. The man who 
reads the mind of a dog is greater than an 
inspired poet. For he is inspired; is a poet, 
and much more. Byron's poem to his dog 
friend is one of the most beautiful, as well as 
the most bitterly keen things in English. 

The dog has long, long years been the sym- 
bol of fidelity, and it must have been some one 

231 



232 LOOK UP 

just lacking in nice discrimination who first 
used that expression, "Going to the dogs." 
Even now, that we view the dog with keener 
appreciation and sjTtipathy, this phrase still 
carries with it condemnation and approbrium. 

Many a man could go to the dogs to great 
advantage. There he might learn many vir- 
tues lacking both in himself and his fellows. 
It is often, too, that a dog has more decency 
than a man. And this, also, is a moral trait 
that one hardly looks for in dumb animals. 

There has been told, in the news, a story of 
how a faithful dog saved its mistress from 
death at the hands of her husband. It lay 
quiet during the time that the man foully 
abused the young woman ; but, when he struck 
at her heart with a knife, it leaped upon him 
in savage rage. Of the two enraged brutes 
there is no question as to which was the nobler. 

Another case is recorded wherein a dog 
saved a girl who was battling for more than 
her life. A faithful bull terrier fastened his 
teeth in the right arm of the man and desper- 
ately fought the miscreant into flight. The 
record of the summer seasons shows many 



GOING TO THE DOGS 233 

cases in which dogs have gone to the rescue 
of drowning persons. 

One of the finest bits of bookmaking is de- 
voted to the history, hfe, habits and breeding 
of the dog. Also is there quite a voluminous 
dog literature; but the human side of the 
brute^ — ^the part which draws him nearer to us 
and gives him a place deep in our aif ection — 
is the one that shines most impressively in liter- 
ature. And recently Albert Payson Terhune, 
a man of large humanities and a fine literar}^ 
craftsman, has added to the appreciation of the 
devoted dumb one of the most exquisite and 
appealing studies in all literature. 

A dog belonging to a New York physician, 
who is an authority on physiology, could sense 
its master's moods more accurately than the 
doctor's wife. It seemed able to grasp even 
complex ideas conveyed by speech, and the 
owner addressed it as he would a human being, 
and was clearly understood. This dog had 
often been sent from the lawn to some particu- 
lar room in the house to bring a specified ob- 
ject, and had done so with the alacrity and 
intelligence of a model servant. 

And you have probably read of that won- 



234 LOOK UP 

derful dog in "Hypatia." It is a creature of 
silent wisdom. Its master, realizing tiiis, con- 
cluded that, beside the brute, all knovdedge of 
life, his education and his philosophy, amount- 
ed to naught. He might have gone and sat at 
the feet of some Gamahel, but he had gained a 
wisdom even bevond this, and so concluded to 
let the dog be his mentor. 

Giving up comfort and riches, he actually 
followed the dog out into the world, and 
finally — as the novelist tells — ^into light. As 
this man was wise, so men to-day may follow 
him with profit. We are too apt to bound the 
whole imiverse by ourselves. JMan is at once 
the greatest and the least of eartlily things. 
Herein is a dog blessed. It has no egotism 
and, therefore, never jeopardizes its self- 
respect. Let us reverse the apphcation of that 
old saying and make "Going to the dogs" an 
expression of beauty and worth. 

Those who love dogs will appreciate the de- 
votion w^hich gives the brute a burial like the 
human; the dumb friend who is "denied in 
heaven the soul he held on earth." One may 
read the epitaph over BjTon's dog and cease 



GOING TO THE DOGS 235 

to wonder why General Daniel Sickles had his 
pet buried in the family plot. Thus the rest 
of the poet's friend is marked: 

Near the spot 

are deposited the remains of one 

who possessed Beauty without Vanity, 

Strength without Insolence, 

Courage without Ferocity, 

All the Virtues of Man without his Vices. 

This praise, which would be unmeaning flattery 

if inscribed over human ashes, 

is but a just tribute to the memory of 

BOATSWAIN, a dog, 

who was born at Newfoundland, May, 1803 

and died at Newstead Abbey, Nov. 18, 1808. 



TRAGEDY OF BEAUTY 

The eye of experience is deceived by no 
chimeras. It sees truly and at a perspective 
that gives to things their proper proportion 
and to actions their just relations. It keenly 
appreciates all that is bright and cheerful, be- 
cause it unfailingly perceives the darker side, 
vnth its shadows and sorrows. All of these 
tilings have to do with us humans — ^^^^hat we 
do from day to day and what befalls us in the 
doing. It is a great world, full of contradic- 
tions, and light or the darkness, just as we 
regard it. 

Into the natural world the Creator placed, 
with a lavish hand, all of the things that are 
reflected in the soul of man. Beauty He gave 
in myriad forms, so bounteous a dower that it 
might impress itself into the nature of the race 
so as to become as much a part of man as any 
of his passions. 

And beauty is a passion with many. If it 
possesses 5^ou, a look at the star-strewn sky, 

236 



TRAGEDY OF BEAUTY 237 

from the hot pavements of the city, will fill 
your soul with harmony and content. The 
fields, starred with purple at eve; the hills, 
whose green is shot with gold at noon, and with 
purple at eve; the quiet stream that .murmurs 
through the sedges, or the bold mountain tor- 
rent that brawls and blusters on its way to the 
sea; the mountains, the valleys, the trees and 
the floral life scattered by Spring Fud kissed 
into passionate maturity by Smrmncr ; the eter- 
nal skies, with the changing songs of light and 
color, and the royally appareled people of the 
sky — all these make chapters in the marvelous 
Eook of Beauty. And no man, in life, may 
read it to the end. 

We, who love beauty and know what prec- 
ious things it can bestow, deplore the vandal- 
ism of a coromercial age that vdll sacrifice the 
miost lovely forms of nature for mere gain. 
Commerciahsm is a foe to beauty or anything 
that possesses it. For, where a thii^g lacks the 
warmth of soul, it has no appreciation for what 
appeals to that which is most unselfish in man. 

You may recall the verses of the school- 
book: ** Woodman, spare that tree!" Read 
them now, and, though they may not seem as 



238 LOOK UP 

companionable" as they were in the old days, 
you will admit that the heart appeal is there. 
But our beautiful forests, with all their mys- 
terious wood hfe, are slowly disappearing. 
]\Iodern progress — ^whether it be in some green 
oasis of a street, in a desert of brick and stone, 
or in a primeval forest — ^halts not for beauty. 

This material spirit, if carried far enough, 
would strip the world of everything fair, out 
of which a profit could be reaped, and compel 
us to live even more than now an artificial life, 
surrounded by make-believe things. 

The woman who wears an aigrette m her 
pretty hat may be a tender-hearted soul, and 
if she is told that her purchase of the feathers 
encouraged a CTuel slaughter of plume birds 
she might shudder and say it was to be de- 
plored. But she would hold to her aigrette. 
If told that the aigrette was stained with hu- 
man blood she mio^ht reluctantly discard it. 
And so., in sentiment, is marked every plume 
feather now worn. 

For the protection of plume birds a national 
association of earnest-hearted persons has been 
doing splendid work. In Florida, where the 
rookeries are most numerous, wardens are ap- 



TRAGEDY OF BEAUTY 239 

pointed to the task of safeguarding the birds 
and their young. Guy M. Bradley, shot and 
killed on Oyster Key, was murdered by men 
who had sworn to take his life, 

WilKam Dutcher, at that time president of 
the National Association of Audubon Socie- 
ties, said: "A home broken up, children left 
fatherless, a woman widowed and sorrowing, a 
faithful and devoted warden, who was a young 
and sturdy man, cut off in a moment, for what? 
That a few more plume birds might be secured 
to adorn heartless women's bonnets. Hereto- 
fore the price has been the life of the birds; 
now is added human blood. Every great 
movement must have its martyrs, and Guy M. 
Bradley is the first martyr in the cause of bird 
protection." 



TIME'S TRANSFORMATIONS 

Progress, wing-footed, robed in the myriad 
glories of achievement, and with her eyes fixed 
unwaveringly upon the future, speeds onward, 
singing the anthem of endless change. Genera- 
tions pass away like phantoms and new, surpris- 
ing things take the place of the old — of what 
we once deemed the stable, the true and tried. 

It was a toucliing reminiscence told by a 
Confederate veteran, who had listened to Jef- 
ferson Davis' inaugural address and years 
afterwards stood on the identical spot and 
heard Theodore Roosevelt dehver a newer 
message to the South, revealing a broader hori- 
zon and hopes and aspirations, which are writ 
as the epitaph of the dead past. Planter feu- 
dahsm, with its cultured leisure class and its 
nation of slaves, has passed away amid blood 
and flame, to be supplanted by an industrial 
class. Those who toil in bondage in the piti- 
less round of the mill are slaves — not black, but 
white. 

240 



TRANSFORMATIONS 241 

Frequently, thus, forms survive, but names 
change, just as words persist to be worn by 
things wholly unlike those which brought them 
into existence. Knave originally meant a man 
servant; villain, a farm laborer attached to a 
\dlla ; pagan, a villager ; dupe, a dove or pigeon ; 
lewd, of the laity ; churl, a tenant at will ; mis- 
creant, a misbehever. And, so, down a long 
list of words, once, at least respectable, but 
have become transformed into things that have 
not a ghost of a semblance to the original. 

These are little things that carry a big lesson, 
a mournful one to those who, holding jealously 
to the present, realize what unfeeling oblitera- 
tions and transformations Progress will surely 
bring about. 

Bear this fact in mind when you go to the 
Horse Show, the magnificent Hippodrome of 
Fashion, in which the Horse has already be- 
come but a picturesque incident. You turn 
from the dun-colored arena to the great oval 
of humans and fill your eyes with the shimmer 
of silks, satins and the misting of finer fabrics ; 
the polite pomp of nodding plumes; the cold 
fire of diamonds in Golconda abundance; the 
liquid glow of depthless sapphires; the cool. 



242 LOOK UP 

satiny sheen of pearls, scarcely fairer than my 
lady's teeth, moist with smiles; the passionate 
flame of rubies, too frequently showing beneath 
cold, passionless lips; emeralds, green as the 
soul of the northern sea aflash in the midnight 
sun; cunningly wrought gold, poems of chas- 
ing and strophes of incrustation, embodying 
beauty and love and dreams which are the!.- 
children ; blooms that bring into a highly arti- 
ficial hfe the very apotheosis of artificial 
growth — ^hothouse flowers ! 

And in all this glory is the Horse eclipsed. 
A real effacement, to be sure, but there is some 
compensation in the honor of having given to 
the enchanting display a name. Who can see 
so far into the future as to say that the name 
and the show will continue long after a marvel- 
ous mechanical age has forced the noble beast 
into uncomplaining extinction? 

You who love the Horse, and have felt the 
hmnanizing kinship that grows between things 
of flesh and blood, will turn from this melan- 
choly picture. And yet it were something of 
a regal distinction that its name be perpetuated 
by so much pomp, beauty and magnificence. 



THIS WAY TO THE STARS! 

This old gray world is spinning on its way 
through the blue void, a punctuation point and 
a problem that transcends any that beset 
mind of man. It is something of a relief to 
turn from the miserable, mean and petty 
things which infest our existence and find calm 
and peace in looking at the heavens. 

The flashing glory of the stars, the sapphire 
immensity of night and harmonious reaches of 
silence fill the soul with beauty and wonder, 
and bring to the observer an overwhelming 
sense of his own littleness. In two ways only 
does the contemplation of the external bring 
about the humbling of man — the viemng of 
the earth from a mountain top and the gazing 
upward along the whispering heights, to the 
stars. 

The professional star gazer, however, has 
ceased to be an impracticable character, a 
dreamer of dreams woven of sidereal gossamer, 
a reader of signs and portents, and dweller in 

243 



244 LOOK UflP 

a realm of phantoms. He is now one of the 
most skilled of scientists, his work necessitat- 
ing infinite delicacy and precision — and imagi- 
nation, also. We gain some idea of how incon- 
sequential a part of the universe we are when 
we ponder on some of the wisest of authorities, 
who venture the belief that, unmarked in space, 
there are probably milhons of inhabited worlds. 
Among them our little earth is as a mote in the 
shine of the sun. 

Professor W. W. Campbell, at that time 
director of the great Lick Observatory, in 
speaking of the possibilities of communication 
with other worlds, said: "At present we have 
no idea how the problem is to be attacked. We 
must not overlook the possibility that tele- 
scopes, of capabilities and powers now un- 
known to us, may be invented and that discov- 
eries will be made as undreamed of now as was 
wireless telegraphy fifty years ago. As to 
human beings on Mars, it is entirely possible, 
although we do know that the human animal, 
as we know him, could not live in the atmos- 
phere of that planet, which is not as dense as 
that on the tops of our highest mountains. It 
is not difficult to believe, however, that human 



THIS WAY TO THE STARS 245 

beings on Mars might be created in our own 
image and still have lungs capable of sustain- 
ing life there." 

And Professor Simon Newcombe, viemng 
the subject from the point of the mathematical 
theory of probabilities: "Let us suppose, to 
fix the ideas, that there are a hundred million 
worlds, but that the chances are one thousand 
to one against any one of these, taken at ran- 
dom, being fitted for the highest development 
of life for the evolution of reason. The chances 
would still be 100,000 of them would be in- 
habited by rational beings, whom we may call 
human. But where are we to look for these 
worlds ? This no man can tell. We only infer 
from the statistics of the stars — and this in- 
ference is fairly well grounded — ^that the num- 
ber of worlds which, so far as we know, may 
be inhabited are to be counted by thousands 
and by milHons." 

When you swell with the pride of power, or 
blush in the shame of a national disgrace, or 
fret or worry over the small things that make 
big discords, it may be well to take a breathing 
spell in contemplating the stars. It will likely 



246 LOOK UP 

be^vilder you ; but if you think of what fills the 
vision in connection with the activities of our 
world, it will broaden your view, make you 
more human, and therefore less proud. You 
will reahze at once the httleness and the in- 
feriority of life as we know it. 



THE WORD "GRAFT" 

The Church Federation's sanction some 
years ago of the use of the word Graft was 
significant and impressive. It was emphasized 
by the failure of the clergymen to find a word 
of more polite texture to express the same 
meaning. "Dishonesty" cannot begin to give 
the various shadings, the high hghts, the low 
tones of Graft. It cannot even suggest the 
brazen operations or the hypocritical face of 
it ; nor even hint its subtleties of expression, its 
dizzy, false heights and its black depths of 
shame. 

There is something primitive in the direct- 
ness of "dishonesty." It is easily defined, but 
this word of an advanced civilization is a cha- 
meleon of crookedness. Graft has come to 
hold an acknowledged place in the language, 
and it stands in the record of the doings of the 
ministers in all its naked evil, without the scant 
drapery of quotation marks. 

It is comprehensive and spans a wide gap. 

247 



248 LOOK UP 

The unspeakable man, defiant in his utter 
degradation; the financier, who stands on the 
upland in the noonshine of power — ^these are 
grafters. So it is the mighty is debased and 
the debased elevated by his blood kinship to 
the other. 

Just as society has been built up through 
successive planes by achievement and the 
magic of thought, as it has grown in its com- 
plexities and the interplay of forces until it is 
a gigantic, bewildering fabric, so has Graft 
been developed. Every pattern of it tells of 
some human aspiration that struggled remorse- 
lessly upward; the crass, sordid things that 
sank into the black ooze of infamy and were 
happy; the little evils of avarice, soon grown 
to be monsters, and all the legion of tempta- 
tions and blemishes that spring from the 
money-lust. 

Graft is now as broad as human nature, and 
it may express all of the notes of moral obtuse- 
ness. It is a giant because it is the evil shadow 
of a giant people. 

At first a pale, noxious thing, it owed its 
being to the vicious and the fallen. Its strength 
flowed to it from the evil in man. It grew 



THE WORD GRAFT 249 

amazingly. Soon it reached power and arro- 
gance. Its touch tainted all classes, and its 
breath spread a malignant fever. But the out- 
cast compelled recognition. It had become a 
social and an economic force. It mounted into 
high planes and took a place among the seats 
of the mighty. 

And now w^hat was once a poisonous, furtive 
thing, born of the brothel and the gutter, is 
uttered in the shadow of the Cross, marking 
the most insidious curse* of gain and the shame 
of a nation. 



OUR ANGELS AND DEMONS 

The vestments of old beliefs are gradually 
falling away. Many of us regard the process 
as we would the desecration of our childhood 
ideals; for the things we know first, and take 
lovingly to our hearts, are the last we care to 
surrender. This expression of the new, while 
it promises much and is compelling by its sheer 
force, is nevertheless saddening. Who that has 
grown to maturity in an old homestead, in- 
stinct with precious memories, would see it 
rent and leveled to the ground to make way 
for a structure desired, v/hose design made no 
appeal to either the utihtarian or the aesthetic 
sense? It would be a tragedy, which no bene- 
fits of the new things could dispel. 

Objects, like beliefs, are so interwoven in our 
lives that they take on something of the human 
quality. A familiar spot by the river, a path- 
way through the meadow to the woods ; a tree 
under which rosy-faced children romped and 
shouted in the pure joy of living; the moun- 

250 



ANGELS AND DESIGNS 251 

tain of a sentimental journey; the troubled 
wastes of a mighty sea; the grim desert, held 
in abyssmal silence; a book, a glove — all these 
and numberless more, big or little, majestic 
or mean, hold some cherished part in our lives. 
They have been breathed upon by our souls; 
they are sacred tilings. 

Yet it is the universal decree that forms 
must change and the Truth endure to the end 
of time. So it is that the old vestments fall 
away and we see Truth in a new dress. Angels 
and demons of old — they have come to us from 
WTitings born of the highest aspirations of the 
soul ; they have filled glowing pages of poetry 
and given to art some of its sublimest aspects. 
Modern thought pronounces them impossible 
creatures; but modern thought often tears 
down what it cannot upbuild. 

True, it would be difficult to find an angel 
with a spread of wing forty-five feet from tip 
to tip ; or a demon, half human, half beast, that 
fed on the bodies and souls of men. Yet both 
angel and demon exist as surely as the sun 
rises and sets, as the tides brim up and sink 
back joyously to the bosom of the seas. 

In this fevered modern life we are the prey 



252 LOOK UP 

of demons that torture ceaselessly, before they; 
kill and devour. The demon Drink! That 
;was no idle figure of speech. It was a life 
tragedy told in three words. Hear what the 
richest man in the world said of a drunkard 
for whom a gathering of devout folk had 
offered up prayers: 

"I have been very sad all during this meet- 
ing, because I have been thinking of that 
young man for whom our prayers were asked, 
who is struggling with the demon Drink. I 
have great s}Tiipathy with every man overcome 
with the temptation to drink. I hope this man 
may be made to know hope. His friend will 
let him know that the prayers of this church — 
of all of us — are with him in efforts to free 
himself of this terrible evil. That is his 
temptation. We all have ours." 

Thus we have it from the mouth of the man, 
who has wielded more power than a crowned 
king, that Temptation is the demon that besets 
us all. Even he is not exempt. In the secrecy 
of introspection, as his one self looked upon the 
baser other, he probably beheld the ugly scars 
left by the clutch of the demon. The foul 



ANGELS AND DEMONS 253 

thing that is the spirit of Financial Avarice is 
probably the most terrible demon of all. 

Side by side with the news of the prayer for 
the drunkard one read of a girl, a slave of the 
demon Superstition, the dupe of human har- 
pies, who believed that, if she failed to see a 
* 'fortune-teller," she would be transformed into 
a hideous beast. She took her own life. 

The demon Speculation has wrecked thou- 
sands of homes and sent men out, tortured, 
into the long, long night. Speculation, a 
puffed, distorted thing breathing out fevers, 
sits on a mountain of gold, from which gleam 
the whitening skulls and bones of men, women 
and children. It has possessed the people with 
a deadly frenzy and many victims will go to 
the sacrifice. There are heaps of money in 
Wall Street! That is the lure. A wise ob- 
server says: 

*'The accumulation of wealth has excited the 
public to such a degree that thousands of spec- 
ulators are bringing their hard-earned money 
into Wall Street, hoping to double or triple 
it by lucky accident. The bulls and bears are 
prepared to take care of the lambs." 

So the world is full of demons, which lie in 



254 LOOK UP 

wait and beset us on every hand. They come 
in the guise of fair things and have a thousand 
lures. Angels may be fewer — ^wingless, com- 
monplace shapes that have no haloes — but the 
word of comfort that they give, the ready aid 
that instinctively finds the need, and the silent, 
warm handclasp — ^these leave behind a radi- 
ance and music which tell of the visitation of 
God's own messengerSr 



ROMANCE AND LIFE 

More books are read now than ever before 
in the history of the human race, and the out- 
put still increases. Everybody reads, from the 
bootblack to the millionaire; for the treasure 
house of literature is so easily accessible that, 
in his gleanings, the bootblack may, indeed, be 
a millionaire. The department stores sell books 
by the ton, hundreds of thousands of them, 
which reach all grades of society. Though 
we are in an unromantic age and a great flood 
of mediocre creation is coming from the press, 
the fine old standard works, unshaken, still 
hold their place. Scott, Dumas, Thackeray, 
Dickens, George Eliot, and others equally dis- 
tinguished are read in factories; and even a 
wider field 'is found there than grew during 
that golden time when there was an Emerson 
cult in the Massachusetts mills. 

Which shows that, however the external 
aspect of the world changes — no matter what 
social or economic convulsions may occur — ^the 

255 



256 LOOK UP 

spirit of romance glows in the heart. It is an 
illiunination which creates a realm of fairies 
and gnomes for the young, and, for the ma- 
ture, mirrors life in a magic glass, which gives 
back reahsm wdth something added, some spirit 
that plays upon the emotions as did the marvel 
tales of childhood. 

It is the spirit of romance. It is the lure of 
the book, and will be so long after the aenemic, 
analytical school has passed away. The cruel 
realities of life we know, for we hve them and 
weep over them. Much of wisdom is pain ; and 
j{ some things we should not learn too much. 
Why take a book to lay an anguish bare when 
many of us have it in our own souls? The 
skill of a surgeon may call for gratitude, but 
the memory of it will not last as long in the 
heart as the echo of some love song. It is the 
touch of the romancer that transfigures all, 
and, careworn and wise of the world, let us 
idle a while in the realm of fancy. 

And yet, if we could but fitly see, we need 
not go to books for all of our romance. We 
are surrounded by books of men and women, 
flesh and blood stories; tragedies written in 
sombre fact and lighted by human souls. Day 



ROMANCE AND LIFE 257 

after day the newspapers have their tales of 
the tragic. Now it is the scion of wealth who 
speeds to meet Doom along the country high- 
way; again, the wan-faced child of the tene- 
ment who, playing along some city beach, is 
swept away to a shore unseen. 

High and low, rich and penniless, the trag- 
edy is universal. Grief in the palace ; tears in 
the hovel. There is no bond stronger than that 
which maketh akin the hearts of men in sor- 
rov/'s night. Were it not for this golden 
tliread of grief, which binds us all, whatever 
our place in the world may be, the brotherhood 
of man would be as a rope of sand. 

When Bouguereau depicted, with his master 
brush, the despair of Eve beside her dead 
child he spoke a universal language, one that 
could have been understood at the dawn of 
time and vdll still murmur in the hearts of 
women at final judgment day. 

But the mother who has lost her child, the 
youth who has looked upon the white, calm 
that once was mother or sister — all who have 
been left stunned and lonely when the mys- 
terious reaper passed — to these must come, ere 
long, a peace that is sorrow's own reward. In 



258 LOOK UP 

the life that has gone out of their own they 
have read a beautiful tale. 

Just as a good book does not cease to exist 
when you reach the regretful finis, so the tale 
is woven into the warp of their hves. The 
conflicting emotions, the hope that the tale 
would end just so, the sympathy with the 
hero's sufferings, the pride in his prowess and 
ambitions — all these have been real. And even 
when the tale is ended and the covers of the 
book are closed forever, how we recall our 
favorite passages, reconstructing tliis incident 
and finding the old-time joy in that! 

IVow, if such be so of the hero created by 
the fancy and kindly genius of a favorite au- 
thor, how much more so can it be with the hero 
or heroine God created, in whose adventures 
we ourselves have shared? 



THE SOUL'S PENALTIES 

When many a man is dying he does not look 
backward at his life, but forward, for it lies 
between him and the hereafter, with all the 
good that has marked it and all of its enormi- 
ties standing out with pitiless salience. A hfe 
evilly led is its o^vn punishment. It exacts its 
penalties with implacable certainty. It is full 
of harassments. Its demands never cease, so 
that the man who carries its burdens is bound, 
like a slave, to the wheel of evil. The pleas- 
ures that grow out of an unworthy life are un- 
real, fitful and unwholesome. They, too, exact 
a penalty even greater than the others. 

When a soul stands, weak and failing, on the 
brink of judgment all these unworthy tilings, 
some of them creatures long forgotten, rise up 
before it to bar the way, mock and jeer. It 
is a blessing, and more often a punishment, 
that no man may escape from himself and the 
things that are of himself. The black shapes, 
when they do not confront him, follow him as 

259 



260 LOOK UP 

relentlessly as shadows; sleep with him; wake 
with liim, and eat with liim. Thev are with 
hini even in his most secret thoughts and weigh 
upon him, stifling and»restraiiiing when he tries 
to rise into a white day from the darkness of 
lower tilings. 

The simplest action is frequently as potent 
as the most inyolved one. By a single un- 
truthful "yes" or "no" a world of injustice 
and pain may be created. A mere motion of 
the head may bring about a hke result. The 
most vital tilings of hfe frequently hang upon 
apparent trifles. 

Yet an action is a tangible something. While 
it possesses personahty, it has neither form nor 
substance, so far as our normal senses tell us. 
Yet if, in our relations with the rest of society, 
all actions became real, palpable tilings that 
live as long as we Hre, it is easy to conclude 
that the lives of men would be purer, more 
generous and s^mipathetic. And it does some- 
times happen that these intangible tilings in a 
man's life become grimly real to him, though 
no other eye may see them. 

A miscreant died in the hospital. All e^-i- 
dence pointed to the fact that he lived a hfe 



THE SOUL'S PENALTIES 261 

full of evil, regardless of human life, and was 
actuated only by the sordid passion for money. 

That a man will sell his soul for gold is an 
old, old story, told to us in tradition and em- 
phasized by the revelation of life day by day. 
This man's Hfe was especially abhorrent. He 
endeavored to set fire to a house in which there 
were scores of sleeping women and children. 
Their lives weighed nothing in the balance 
against his purpose. The horror of the thing 
never appealed to him for an instant. Love of 
money had made him inhuman. He had as 
much compassion as that which stirs the heart 
of a wolf which has at last pulled its panting, 
straining prey to the ground. 

In his career he had probably caused more 
than one disaster and escaped, but now the 
Fates had turned against him. The tragedy 
was averted and he fell into the hands of the 
law. It is said that confinement may kill what 
little soul is left in a man, or resurrect the 
whole of it. A rebirth often, too, comes from 
pain. This man — a prisoner — had been racked 
by pain for many days, hsLving been frightfully 
injured while attempting to escape. Pain 
chasteneth, even as fire ; and, while he lay upon 



262 LOOK UP 

a bed of suffering, some wondrous things were 
taking place. Something was born within him 
linked to fear — something he had never known 
before — and to him came a view of himself 
which made him shudder. 

So when death, silent and gray, stood at his 
bed, he saw, besides the Presence, all of the 
unclean things he had done, the acts his hand 
had shaped. He shrieked in frantic fear. 
"Fire! Fire!" he cried, repeating the word 
that carried terror in the night, when he had 
worked and brought death to many therein. 

"Fire!" He never knew before the horror 
and torture in the sound of it. Around him 
the cool, white walls of the hospital seemed to 
burst into flames, hissing, roaring, smiting. 
Then he cried for water, as one in torment. 
Writhing in torture, his soul went out. 

So the life that he lived was before him when 
he passed away. It would be difficult to find 
a more impressive sermon than this to take to 
our hearts as we discharge or evade our re- 
sponsibilities in the struggle of life. 



THE CROOK DE LUXE 

Burglary to-day is practically a new art, 
with certain essentials that have called to the 
profession a much higher grade of individual 
than in the old days, when an industrious 
cracksman went forth with only a "jiromy" 
and a bludgeon. The coarse, rough-hearted 
man, primitively equipped, was the pioneer in 
an evolutionary process, which has now 
reached a state of culture and refinement. 

The number of visitations that the smart 
folk in the vicinity of New York received from 
literary and epicurean thieves drew public 
attention to the fact of an amazingly high 
development among the "crooks." Time was 
when the ordinary housebreaker, if hunger as- 
sailed him, was content to satisfy his internal 
gnawings with a bit of cold mutton and a 
bottle of beer, or, as has often happened in 
England, by having an orgy with the pies and 
tarts. 

The burglar of quahty, as pictured in the 

263 



264 LOOK UP 

news, was not only a judge of good cooking, 
but was competent to pass upon the most ex- 
pensive brands of wine, and insisted upon hav- 
ing Burgundy always at blood temperature. 
Not only concerning things of the palate was 
he expert, but, apparently, in literary matters 
he possessed both polite judgment and unfail- 
ing good taste. 

An uninvited visitor to a house who, after 
taking a light luncheon, including v ine and 
one of the best cigars, retires to the library to 
read Herbert Spencer is not a person of the 
ordinary gumshoe sort. He probably wore 
patent leathers, had his nails carefully mani- 
cured, his teeth pearly in their whiteness, his 
dress thoroughly genteel in line and design, 
and was so mannered that he might grace an 
afternoon tea with charming poise. This, at 
least, was the ideal conception of him. How 
much polite criminal literature has to do with 
the actual man and our conception of him 
opens up an interesting conjecture. 

Crime stories have the appeal of forbidden 
things, and, when formed by clever minds, we 
are given friendly, sympathetic, handshaking 



THE CROOK DE LUXE 265 

acquaintance with criminals, impossible had 
they remained in the matter of fact isolation 
of the daily prints. In truth, it is all very 
diverting and absorbing, and, in the exhilara- 
tion of it, one is not conscious of how he may 
become affected by its poison. 

Yet, when an honest man, reading of the 
exploits of a polite thief, gives the character his 
sympathy and follows him through his exploits 
breathlessly, for fear the heavy hand of the 
law will fall upon him — that very moment has 
the reader lost something of his moral worth 
and has himself been robbed of something as 
precious to the character as jewels are to the 
vanity of women. He may not realize it, but 
the thing has been done, just the same! 

It is a peculiar fact about evil that it has 
the tenacity and insistence of life itself. Its 
roots go deeply into human nature, and the 
growth continues, despite perfunctory ablution 
and formal resolve. That a man should find 
himself not only sympathizing with, but admir- 
ing, crime because it is deft and picturesque, 
should be a revelation to awaken him at once 
to his danger. 



266 LOOK UP 

As we have welcomed the polite thief in liter- 
ature, so now are we responsible for him in 
actuahty. Born in the mind of the novelist, 
he at one time stood an imposing but unreal 
figure. Now, if thieves were not progressive 
and were entirely lacking in imagination the 
unreal man of fiction might still have been 
holding his place as an interesting abstraction. 
But the thief appreciated him fully as much as 
did the honest reader. And what ambition was 
more natural than to realize the type in life, 
to incarnate it? 

And so it has been done. The thing taken 
to the hearts of many from the field of fancy, 
and possible only through the approval of the 
public, becoming an actuahty, now turns upon 
those that made it possible. The public finds 
itself confronted and preyed upon by the real- 
ity, a Frankenstein monster with literary 
tastes, which robs and reads by night. 

And yet there is one cheering side to the 
dilemma. Wliile those who possess expensive 
"wine cellars and de luxe libraries are in con- 
stant fear of being visited by the gentleman 
burglar, those who have, at most, a few bottles 



THE CROOK DE LUXE 267 

of near-beer in the ice box and a collection of 
standard works, well worn and in inexpensive 
bindings, may retire to untroubled sleep with 
the assurance that they will not be disturbed by 
the literary burglar with expensive tastes. He 
could not visit them without losing caste. 



CONCENTRATION AND SUCCESS 

Study the life of any successful man and 
you will find that which brought a full measure 
of rewards to him was his singleness of pur- 
pose. He knew what he wished to attain, and, 
keeping the prospect clear of all diverting in- 
fluences, kept his eye fixed upon the objective 
and struggled straight toward it. 

This may not seem to be a difficult task to a 
man who has no purpose in his life and who 
is indolently indifferent to the things that 
most men prize. Yet it is one of the most 
arduousu, for single purpose is made effective 
through concentration, insistence and pertinac- 
ity. These things are not possessed by a man 
of vacillating character. 

Manv successful men in material affairs 
have lacked the education that might have 
brought to them hair-splitting hesitancy or 
analytical irresolution; but they roughly and 
directly worked purpose to realization. 

It is pointed out that Hamlet, over whom 

268 



CONCENTRATION 269 

there has been so much critical study and an- 
alytical psychology, had in him all of the essen- 
tials of a man of action — which he was not — * 
but that the one flaw in his make-up was his 
divided will. Fused into single purpose, there 
might have been another story to tell and less 
of that which is obscure and puzzling. 

If the Prince of Denmark, carefully weigh- 
ing matters, had finally come to a determina- 
tion and said, ''This one thing will I do and 
none other till this is accomplished!" there 
would have been less of tragedy and heart- 
breaking. But, then, the story would not have 
been half so interesting and folks would not 
have been debating it even until to-day. 

As Hamlet's divided will brought disaster, 
so it has been with men and bodies of men that 

have been afflicted with the same misfortune. 
Make it a habit to concentrate — try it for pas- 
time, bring it as an essential to work — and you 
will be building the sinews of success! 



GIFT OF PROPHECY 

A man with a gift of prophecy, first regard-' 
ing the conditions of life of to-day — ^the stu- 
pendous industrial development, the prodigies 
of finance and the artificialities which attend 
our actual living — and then looking in the fu- 
ture, may behold wondrous things, unbeliev- 
able even to those of us who are gifted with the 
most ardent imaginations. 

Prophecy may often be an inspiration, like 
the flower of thought that suddenly blooms in 
the soul of a poet and finds expression in color 
and form, and that music which is the audible 
perfume of the soul. Again, it may be the 
result of the operation of conscious or uncon- 
scious logic. For the things that come to pass, 
and which realize prophecy, are the result of 
the unfailing logic of events; of what men 
think ; of what their hands find to do, and what 
they hope to accomplish in that period which 
is ever before us. 

There has even been written a work showing 

270 



GIFTED PHOPHECY 271 

how prophecy may be something in the nature 
of an exact science; but this statement is nat- 
urally regarded with some question, though 
sybils, seers, astrologists, chiromancers and 
all of the varied and bizarre class that prognos- 
ticate for pelf probably insist to the contrary. 
But these are petty, sordid considerations 
which" have to do solely with the individual and 
his puny activities. 

The real prophet is a giant, whose feet press 
the earth but whose head is capped by clouds, 
and into whose ear the stars whisper their eter- 
nal mystery. H. G. Wells, who dehghtfuUy 
intermingles science, sociology and fiction, pos- 
sesses the breadth of view of the real seer, and 
the only regret is that we cannot live long 
enough to give him his full measure of great- 
ness. That we may, indeed, truly foresee some 
of the wonders of the future is emphasized in 
looking back over the speeches made by Wen- 
dell Phillips. 

On July 28, 1865, he delivered an address 
to the school children of Boston, in Music Hall, 
and the boys and girls, now grown to gray ma- 
turity, realize what a rare privilege was theirs 



272 LOOK UP 

in being given a view of one of the marvels of 
the future, which is so familiar to-day. 
^ "We invented a telegraph," said Mr. Phil- 
lips, speaking of old age and progress. "But 
v/iiat of that? I expect, if I hve forty years, 
to see a telegraph that will send messages with- 
out wire both ways at the same time. If you 
do not invent it, you are not as good as we are. 
You are bound to go ahead of us." 

And just within the forty years that this in- 
spired man fixed as the period of development 
the things were demonstrated as a social and 
commercial fact. So, surely as the natural eye 
beholds objects, did he see the thing in the 
future. 

Wliich shows us something of the divine pos- 
sibilities of thought working within a man of 
absolute integrity, of most exalted purpose, 
and with a heart big enough to feel the pain 
of the entire human family. 



To love is to live and — to suffer. Honey 
soon cloys the taste ; bitters give the zest. 



The heart that canl)e cheerful amid disaster 
makes to-morrow a God-given promise. 



LOOK UP 27S 

Foolish pride is not always the garb of the 
fool. Genius is notoriously careless in its 
dress. 



No one is old whose heart is full of the joy 
of life. Thus you frequently see eighty years 
young and thirty years old. 



Just how much wild oats a man sows in his 
youth determines the amount of breakfast food 
in his old age. 



When you cultivate intellect at the expense 
of heart, the day may come when you will envy 
the wisdom of the fool. 



Constancy is a jewel, when it is not set in the 
base metal of an unworthy attachment. 



Keep your face ever toward the light, and 
the black shadow will be behind you. 



Adversity is the crucible that refines to gold 
a strong character; a weak one, it often turns 
to dross. 



274 LOOK UP 

Faith may grow dim in the sunny, care-free 
days, but it becomes transfigured by gloom. 
It touches with gold the keen edge of suffering 
and sweetens the bitterness of anguish. 



How often do we weep over the comedies 
of deceit, and smile at the tragedies of con- 
science ! 

He, who is ill-bred enough to tell the truth, 
may not hold to much social prestige; but he 
will retain his self-respect, which is immeasur- 
ably greater than crown or favor. 



They tire of hfe most who have not Hved 
at all. 

We learn the full blessing of pleasure after 
we have mastered the alphabet of pain. 



Wise men may puzzle over the mission of 
this old world of ours, but beautiful mother- 
love makes it a simple cradle. 



Because of its freshness of feehng, its sunny 
hopefulness and love, all Youth is beautiful. 
And it has a rare, exalted charm when set in 
the snows of life's winter. 



W2S 



LOOK UP 275 

A woman, deserted, scourged by ner sisters 
and gnawed by hunger, turned her face toward 
heaven and gratefully smiled. And Cynicism, 
looking on, was moved to tears, saying, "Here, 
indeed, is Faith." 



Anguished Love stopped to console a dark- 
haired woman whose eyes were tearless and 
whose face was contorted with pain. And the 
sufferer said: "Now, that I have beheld you, 
my torture becomes as nothing." 



Some folks wonder why the world does not 
adjust itself to suit them; others marvehng 
that it does, share their happiness with others. 



"Tell the truth and shame the devil," said 
Candor to Fashion, who sweetly replies : 

"But why wantonly humiliate a clever 
friend?" 



. ** J\ 









->. 



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